Company plans massive Virginia gas plant to power data centers

OIL & GAS: Virginia residents begin to organize against newly announced plans for a 3,500 MW natural gas-fired power plant that would be built alongside a data center complex and tap into the Mountain Valley Pipeline. (Danville Register & Bee)

ALSO:

• A West Virginia gas utility partners with a company to develop solid oxide fuel cells for customers that can run on natural gas, propane, renewable gas or gas blended with hydrogen. (WV Metro News)
• Arkansas regulators press officials with a gas company, who reveal its proposed rate increase would be much higher than what’s been calculated in a settlement agreement. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

COAL: An investigation finds as many as 1,300 ​“zombie coal mines” across Appalachia, which haven’t produced coal in more than a decade but also haven’t been reclaimed. (Scripps News)

GRID: Florida Power & Light and Duke Energy see varying results from buried power lines during Hurricanes Helene and Milton, leading to questions about the cost-effectiveness of the practice. (E&E News)

PIPELINES: Private equity firm Blackstone considers purchasing a minority stake in the Mountain Valley Pipeline and other interstate pipelines from a natural gas producer. (Reuters)

SOLAR:

• Vanderbilt University celebrates the launch of a Mississippi solar farm that is the first of three projects planned in a partnership between the university and Tennessee company Clearloop. (Vanderbilt Hustler)
• A company closes financing for a 138 MW solar farm in Mississippi that reached commercial operation this summer. (news release)

WIND: A company commissions a 203 MW onshore wind farm in Texas. (news release)

NUCLEAR: Mississippi officials expect an increase in power demand from data centers could lead to more production from a 1,433 MW nuclear power plant in the state, and perhaps construction of new reactors as new technology is tested. (Vicksburg Daily News)

CARBON CAPTURE: U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin announces $44 million in federal money for a carbon storage hub in West Virginia and Ohio. (Intelligencer)

UTILITIES:

• Dominion Energy’s latest 15-year plan proposes to double generation and decrease emissions by doubling wind and solar power and increasing natural gas-fired energy by 70%, which means it would fail to meet Virginia’s 2045 deadline to retire fossil fuel plants. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
• Federal regulators approve an agreement to allow the Tennessee Valley Authority and Midcontinent Independent System Operator to sell ​“emergency energy” to each other. (Utility Dive)

CLIMATE:

• Hurricane Helene killed at least 226 people in the Southeast, including at least 98 in western North Carolina, where dozens more are still missing. (Washington Post)
• Families in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina try to figure out what to do next after Hurricane Helene destroyed their homes. (Knoxville News Sentinel, Asheville Citizen-Times)

OVERSIGHT: Three candidates compete for an influential seat that’s often been the deciding vote on Louisiana’s utility regulation board. (WRKF)

POLITICS: An analysis finds the South hosts 38% of America’s population but has received nearly half of the clean energy and manufacturing investments generated from 2022 climate legislation. (Washington Post)

COMMENTARY:

• Virginia’s new energy regulators should press Dominion Energy to adhere to state law and retire its fossil fuel-fired power plants by 2045 instead of building more natural gas, writes an energy columnist. (Virginia Mercury)
• With U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin set to retire, the president of the National Black Lung Association calls on his fellow West Virginia U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito to step up and advocate for coal miners’ health. (West Virginia Watch)