OIL & GAS: Some drillers in Texas’ Permian Basin are paying buyers to take their excess supply because they’re producing so much natural gas they’ve exceeded available storage space and pipeline capacity. (New York Times)

ALSO: 

SOLAR: 

COAL: 

  • As West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s debt problems pile up, federal lawyers ask a judge to hold 23 companies owned by his family in contempt for making continually late payments and failing to meet the terms of a settlement over mine safety fines. (WV Metro News)
  • Federal officials find a West Virginia agency violated labor laws by failing to pay mine inspectors who worked overtime without preapproval. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)

GRID: Louisiana residents complain to local and state officials about frequent outages in an area managed by Entergy. (WVUE) 

UTILITIES: 

CLIMATE: As Tropical Storm Debby swamps the Carolinas, causing widespread outages and threatening a Georgia dam, experts say climate change is making tropical cyclones even worse. (Charleston Post and Courier, The State, WAGA, Inside Climate News)

BUILDINGS: A technology company experiments with using Virginia dredging waste as an ingredient in concrete to lower its carbon footprint and make a stronger product. (Virginia Mercury)

STORAGE: An Oklahoma fire department posts a video of a dog sparking a fire by chewing on a lithium-ion battery to its Facebook page as a warning to residents. (Associated Press)

EFFICIENCY: 

COMMENTARY: West Virginia regulators’ push to prop up coal is harming state residents and their pocketbooks, writes an environmental policy analyst. (West Virginia Watch)

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Mason has worked as a journalist since 2001, covering Appalachian communities and the issues that affect them. He compiles the Southeast Energy News digest. Mason previously worked as a wildlife biologist before moving into journalism by freelancing at Coast Weekly in Monterey, California, before taking an internship in 2001 at High Country News. He wrote for the Enterprise Mountaineer in western North Carolina and the Roanoke Times in western Virginia before going freelance in 2012. His work has appeared in Southerly, Daily Yonder, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, WVPB’s Inside Appalachia and elsewhere. Mason was born and raised in Clifton Forge, Virginia, and now lives with his family and a small herd of goats in Floyd County, Virginia.