Alabama coal strike reaches one-year mark

COAL: Miners have been striking against an Alabama coal company for a year, but say their morale remains high as they seek better pay and benefits. (AL.com)

SOLAR:
• The Tennessee Valley Authority partners with Facebook’s parent company and others to build a 70 MW solar farm in Tennessee. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)
• Dominion Energy proposes building an 80 MW solar farm in a rural Virginia county. (Kenbridge Victoria Dispatch)
• A Virginia county planning commission sets a hearing for a proposed 1 MW solar farm. (Daily Progress)
• A Virginia car dealership adds nearly 100 kW of rooftop solar. (Solar Power World)
• Legislation passed by Florida lawmakers would cut incentives for rooftop solar owners, allow utilities to raise the cost of switching to renewable energy and essentially erase ​“the only pro-solar policy in Florida,” activists say. (The Guardian)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• A North Carolina county calls on state officials to fund a shift from diesel to electric school buses. (Greensboro News & Record)
• An Atlanta car dealership sees a spike in demand for electric vehicles as gas prices rise. (WGCL)

NUCLEAR: The Tennessee Valley Authority seeks comments on its proposal to install advanced nuclear reactors at a Tennessee plant. (Oak Ridger)

MINING: A West Virginia researcher tells a U.S. Senate panel about the possibilities of recovering rare earth elements and other materials from acid mine drainage that can be used in clean energy and high tech components. (Charleston Gazette-Mail, subscription)

RENEWABLES: Georgia Power’s shift to renewable power is making the state more attractive to data centers. (Atlanta Business Journal, subscription)

BIOMASS: A biomass energy company sells its controversial, failed North Carolina wood pellet factory to a real estate company. (N.C. Policy Watch)

CLIMATE: The combination of climate change, pollution and wildfires has created a synergistic effect that has intensified the allergy season in Texas, experts say. (San Antonio Report)

CARBON CAPTURE:
• A gas and oil company tells investors a planned carbon removal facility in the Permian Basin could cost up to $1 billion. (E&E News, subscription)
• Two senators and a Congress member from West Virginia urge the EPA to fast-track state applications to assume oversight for carbon capture projects. (news release)

HYDROGEN: President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin both advocate for hydrogen as a power source that can reduce carbon emissions, but Biden sees it as a renewable source while Manchin envisions it as a byproduct of fossil fuels. (E&E News, subscription)

UTILITIES: A clean energy generation and distribution company will open an office in Houston. (Houston Chronicle)

COMMENTARY:
• Other cities should replicate a Texas city’s plan to power all of its municipal operations by developing a solar farm on a former landfill, writes an editorial board. (Dallas Morning News)
• An editorial board celebrates the announcement of an electric vehicle factory in North Carolina after the state has tried for years to attract an auto manufacturer. (Greensboro News & Record)
• Regulators should look for ways to lower the cost of Dominion Energy’s planned $9.8 billion wind farm off Virginia’s coast, but that estimate doesn’t incorporate economic development, job growth and the state’s need for cleaner energy, writes an energy columnist. (Virginia Mercury)