"Five ethanol facilities in Minnesota have been cited in the past 12 months for widespread air and water quality violations. They have paid more than $2.8 million in penalties and corrective actions."
Plans for one of the first new nuclear power reactors in decades -- a third unit at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, were put on hold by Constellation Energy. The Energy Department said the project is so risky that Constellation must pay high fees if it wants the U.S. taxpayers to guarantee construction loans. But those subsidies were not high enough for Constellation. The demise of its poster child raised questions about the so-called "nuclear renaissance."
"The Department of Energy and Washington State Department of Ecology have reached agreement on a consent decree that sets new court-enforced deadlines for emptying Hanford tanks of radioactive waste and treating the waste."
"California voters are remaining true to one stereotype -- their commitment to the environment. A measure to suspend the state's vanguard climate change law is heading for failure, by a margin of 49 percent to 37 percent, because voters see the law doing more economic good than harm, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday showed."
"U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Cape Wind President Jim Gordon signed the first lease for an offshore wind farm in the federal waters of the United States this morning at the American Wind Energy Association's Offshore Wind Conference in Atlantic City."
"The solar panels are coming back! A month after environmentalist Bill McKibben brought one of the original Carter-era solar panels to Washington, the White House said it is putting new panels on the White House residence."
"For more than six years, a power plant that towers over Chicago's Southeast Side repeatedly has belched out smoke so thick it violates air pollution laws and aggravates respiratory illnesses for residents nearby."
"Achieving greater efficiency and control requires hooking almost every aspect of the electricity grid up to the Internet, making it more vulnerable to cyber attacks."
"Oil industry and government officials could get caught flat-footed again by another deep-water blowout in the coming months because they have yet to incorporate many of the lessons learned during the BP disaster, experts inside and outside the business tell The Associated Press."
"With insurgents increasingly attacking the American fuel supply convoys that lumber across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, the military is pushing aggressively to develop, test and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels."
