Can Arkansas’ lithium boom avoid a bust?

MINING: Arkansas sees a rush by companies to mine lithium for batteries, triggering memories of unscrupulous and shady behavior during a previous oil boom and raising concerns about the ephemeral nature of extraction. (Grist)

ALSO: An Alabama coal miner dies following a rock collapse at a coal mine that’s been accused of numerous safety violations and was sued over the death of a resident in a home explosion atop the mine earlier this year. (Inside Climate News)

GRID:

• Utilities and energy producers prepare for outages and potential damage to infrastructure as Hurricane Helene bears down on Florida as a ​“catastrophic” Category 4 storm. (Tallahassee Democrat)
• New Orleans’ city council debates whether to cut back more trees around power lines after Entergy presents data about vegetation-related outages while the city’s parks department argues against changing tree clearance policies. (NOLA.com)
• Environmental activists in Memphis, Tennessee, call for the Greater Memphis Chamber to better engage with the community about Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer project and its effects on utilities and air quality. (Commercial Appeal)

PIPELINES:

• The planned 645-mile DeLa Express Pipeline across Texas from the Permian Basin to a Louisiana terminal creates landowner concerns about its effects on nearly 13,000 acres of land, including the possibility of eminent domain. (KOSA)
• The 580-mile Matterhorn Pipeline from the Permian Basin to Houston is set to begin operations in the next few weeks. (KMID/KPEJ)

UTILITIES:

• The Tennessee Valley Authority announces it will award bonuses to its leaders based on adding renewables and batteries to the grid, after environmentalists criticized it for boosting executive pay in recent years based on deciding to build more gas plants. (WPLN)
• Dominion Energy partners with federal and state agencies in Virginia for an exercise simulating cyberattacks against the power grid. (WTVR)
• Florida regulators approve four utilities to collect more than $1.1 billion from customers for projects to weatherize electric systems against storms. (News Service of Florida)

STORAGE: Georgia Tech researchers develop a low-cost iron chloride cathode for lithium-ion batteries, which could reduce costs and improve performance in electric vehicles and large battery storage systems. (news release)

OVERSIGHT: A Republican incumbent on a powerful three-person Texas commission that regulates the oil and gas industry is running for re-election against candidates from the Democratic, Libertarian and Green parties. (Houston Chronicle)

CLIMATE: Advocates say New Orleans’ emergency preparedness plans for shelters and evacuation don’t have enough support for people with disabilities. (Louisiana Illuminator)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tells electric vehicle drivers to move their cars to higher ground to avoid exposure to seawater during Hurricane Helene. (Florida Politics)

BIOFUELS: A renewable diesel company considers selling its Alabama refinery after filing for bankruptcy. (Biodiesel Magazine)

COMMENTARY: North Carolina regulators should use flexible, carbon-free renewables instead of natural gas plants to fill a pending power generation gap caused by the planned retirement of coal-fired plants and anticipated load growth, writes a decarbonization advocate. (Southern Alliance for Clean Energy)