Southeast solar factories take root as Trump takes aim

This roundup of energy news headlines comes from our Southeast Energy News newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox each morning.

SOLAR

Domestic solar manufacturing seems to be taking off — including at a new South Carolina factory that plans to ramp up to 3 GW of annual production capacity by this fall — just as President Trump takes office and launches an attack on renewables. (Canary Media, news release)

A company announces it’s begun production at its new photovoltaic inverter factory in Texas. (news release)

FOSSIL FUELS

Texas’ liquified natural gas producers had anticipated ramping up exports but now face a 15% retaliatory tariff from China and the prospect Trump might ramp up a trade war with the European Union, its largest market. (Houston Chronicle)

West Virginia coal producers say they’re concerned about retaliatory tariffs from China that could lead to local furloughs. (WCHS)

A West Virginia coal mine where a miner died last month has a long history of environmental and safety violations. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Trump’s rollback of clean energy incentives hasn’t yet affected BMW’s $1.7 billion plan to adapt its existing South Carolina factory to make electric vehicles and add a battery plant. (Post and Courier)

Kentucky opens its second federally funded electric vehicle fast charging station. (WKYT)

GRID

Developers say they’ve acquired more than half of the easements to build a 1.9 GW, 375-mile transmission line to connect a massive wind farm to northeastern Oklahoma. (Wagoner County American-Tribune)

Trump’s push to halt infrastructure and clean energy funding has paused and created uncertainty around more than $1 billion in projects to upgrade and strengthen Georgia’s power grid. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

A Virginia county already home to 199 data centers tells business leaders that 117 more centers are ​“in the pipeline.” (Loudoun Now)

WIND

Mississippi lawmakers advance legislation to study wind turbines’ effects on nearby farms. (Magnolia Reporter)

CLIMATE

North Carolina faces the daunting prospect of finding tens of billions of dollars to pay for recovery from Hurricane Helene, which a state budget office projects will cost $60 billion. (Carolina Public Press)

UTILITIES

North Carolina appoints an interim chair for its utility regulatory board after the previous chair resigned in late January. (Daily Energy Insider)

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s CEO says the federal utility likely will comply with Trump’s order for workers to fully return to in-office work. (Chattanooga Times Free Press, subscription)

POLITICS

Trump’s freeze of clean energy and infrastructure funding creates cascading problems for groups that rely on the money, including a nonprofit conducting an ambitious air monitoring project in marginalized communities in the Carolinas. (Inside Climate News)

Virginia lawmakers advance environmental and energy related bills ahead of the halfway point of their legislative session, including multiple measures affecting data centers and solar projects. (WHRO)

COMMENTARY

A person who was arrested for locking themselves to construction equipment on the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia discusses climate change and the fight to stop large fossil fuel projects. (Boston Globe)

South Carolina has an opportunity to restart a failed nuclear expansion project, but policymakers should be careful to use transparency and clear safeguards to prevent another debacle, writes a policy student. (Post and Courier)