Regulators approve Georgia Power’s plan for three new gas units

OIL & GAS: The five Republican members of Georgia’s regulatory board vote unanimously to approve Georgia Power’s plan to build three new gas-fired units at a power plant and bill ratepayers for the cost while skipping the normal bidding process for construction. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

ALSO:

• A judge rejects a federal agency’s recommendations for protecting whales and other threatened marine species because they don’t account for the possibility of catastrophic oil spills as a possible effect of awarding new offshore drilling leases. (NOLA.com)
• A study links fracking activity to pre-2017 earthquakes in parts of the Permian Basin by showing they didn’t originate as deep as originally thought, but instead occurred in shallow areas that correspond to fracking wastewater disposal. (Dallas Morning News)
• A lawyer enters into a contract with a West Virginia county commission to hold companies accountable for cleanup of abandoned natural gas wells. (Beckley Register-Herald)

SOLAR: Louisiana lawmakers ask a parish board to pause consideration of new solar projects — including a proposed 375 MW facility — until state regulators implement new rules requiring such projects to go through a state permitting process and provide a decommissioning plan. (KPLC)

CARBON CAPTURE: A company drops its plan to build a carbon capture facility alongside its $18.4 billion Texas liquified natural gas facility that’s already under construction, but which recently hit a legal snag. (DeSmog)

WIND: Virginia residents complain of noise and disruption from construction of Dominion Energy’s offshore wind farm. (WTKR)

EMISSIONS: A Louisiana activist fights a fuel company’s plans to build a blue ammonia plant to generate hydrogen and feedstock for the fertilizer industry that residents fear will only intensify pollution in an already burdened community. (Floodlight)

GRID:

• Texas’ grid regulator credits new battery, solar wind power for boosting the state grid and preventing conservation alerts so far this summer. (KVUE, KDFW)
• A heat wave setting new record high temperatures in parts of Texas is set to test the state grid’s reliability. (San Angelo Live, CBS News)
• A Florida homeowner says she’s lost money over ruined appliances and worries about safety after a series of power surges she says began when Duke Energy started a project to underground power lines. (WFTS)
• Thousands of Florida residents lose power during sporadic outages that Florida Power & Light blames on a failed main feeder and says is unrelated to its ongoing project burying power lines. (Observer)

UTILITIES:

• The Georgia Supreme Court hears arguments in a case about retail competition between power providers Walton Electric Membership Corp. and Georgia Power. (Georgia Recorder)
• A South Carolina legislative panel signs off on the state-owned utility’s plan to purchase more than 150 acres to build a power plant if it’s unable to partner with Dominion Energy on a proposed natural gas-fired plant elsewhere. (South Carolina Daily Gazette)

FINANCING: A Florida county board considers reinstituting a program to fund clean energy improvements that it banned in 2020 after homeowners complained the cost was attached to their property tax bills. (WFLA)

CLIMATE: A coalition of prisoner’s rights groups seek to persuade a federal judge to issue an order requiring Texas to install air conditioning in its prisons, where researchers have found the heat index can exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit. (E&E News)