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The phrase "clean coal" was repeated by virtually every major presidential candidate this year. Now the battle over what it means is heating up. A group of environmental organizations concerned about global warming, including one backed by former vice president Al Gore, is launching an advertising campaign this week to counter the coal industry's efforts to promote what it calls "clean coal."

To perhaps avoid the truth that was so inconvenient to President Bush, on Tuesday Barack Obama will meet with Al Gore to discuss energy policy and climate change. The talk, which will take place in Chicago, will also cover how energy and climate can fit into job creation and the economy.

President-elect, Barack Obama, has had a very favorable view of renewable energy, and has presented some specific plans about how to increase the renewable portfolio in the United States. Below is a lis of items in his proposed Comprehensive Energy Plan, with attention to both short term and long term objectives. Comprehensive Energy Plan * Provide short-term relief to American families facing pain at the pump. * Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. * Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future. * Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined. * Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars -- cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America. * Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.

Saul Griffith's game plan, a solution framework for the climate challenge, begins with a 6-step model. Assume changes in CO2 cause climate changes. Choose a temperature where we'd like to set the planet. From temperature, calculate how much carbon we can burn. Figure out what fuels we can burn. Analyze new energy sources. Finally calculate a new, survivable energy mix. His primer on energy units makes his model accessible to all, no matter their level of technical knowledge.

If the plans being laid for the economy and the environment work out the way President-elect Barack Obama's advisers hope they do, the future of energy can be summed up in one word: electricity. That one word covers a lot of policy twists, however: What will the economic downturn mean for initiatives to cut down on greenhouse-gas emissions? What will the recent drop in gasoline prices mean for efforts to boost alternatives to fossil fuels? Can the electrical grid handle increased demand? How do you smooth out the highs and lows of power generation? Where will all that power come from?

The Bush administration is trying to make it tougher for Congress to block mining and oil and gas drilling on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management, which manages 258 million acres of federal property, stripped from its regulations Thursday a provision that gives two Congressional committees the power to compel the Interior Secretary to temporarily place public land off limits to mining and oil and gas development.

-Amory Lovins, a renowned author and big thinker on energy, specializes in making the impossible real. His 4,000-square-foot Colorado home has no furnace, uses a few dollars' worth of electricity a month, and features an indoor tropical garden with banana trees and papaya plants. In conversation, he's quick to pull out his iPhone to show a car prototype inspired by the Hypercar, which is three to five times more efficient than conventional cars. He's the chief scientist and co-founder of nonprofit advisory firm Rocky Mountain Institute, which develops environmentally friendly solutions using business as a lever. Among the organizations it advises are Ford Motor, Wal-Mart, and the Pentagon.

George Bush is behaving like a furious defaulter whose home is about to be repossessed. Smashing the porcelain, ripping the doors off their hinges, he is determined that there will be nothing worth owning by the time the bastards kick him out. His midnight regulations, opening the United States's wilderness to logging and mining, trashing pollution controls, tearing up conservation laws, will do almost as much damage in the last 60 days of his presidency as he achieved in the foregoing 3 000.

The governors of the nation's largest energy-producing states are encouraging President-elect Barack Obama to quickly adopt a national energy policy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The bipartisan Western Governors' Association delivered Obama a four-page letter outlining what steps it believes his administration should take to address the issue in his first 100 days in office.

Four Federal agencies today released a Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Final PEIS) proposing to designate more than 6,000 miles of energy transport corridors on Federal lands in 11 Western States. The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Defense (the Agencies) prepared the Final PEIS as part of their work to implement Section 368 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The proposed energy corridors would facilitate future siting of oil, gas, and hydrogen pipelines, as well as electricity transmission and distribution facilities on Federal lands in the West to meet the region's increasing energy demands while mitigating potential harmful effects to the environment.

The American Physical Society has just released a report on improving energy efficiency in the transportation and buildings sector: Energy = Future Think Efficiency There are links from the above to an Executive Summary and the full report (100 page PDF). This is not just a "change your light bulbs" document, but rather a comprehensive, information-filled challenge to the status quo with regards to government inaction with regards to energy conservation. It is also not a document on energy production and future difficulties in being able to do enough of this to keep the lights on -- even with better efficiency. But it is well worth a read, with lots of data on energy use and great graphics.

Barack Obama has created a top-notch team to guide his transition into the White House (see "Obama fills key posts on environment, energy teams"). Next, he should create a team to guide America's transition to a new energy economy. I'm not talking about the prestigious group of economic advisors Obama already has assembled to help him identify solutions to the economic meltdown. I'm talking about a team that includes experts in sustainable energy technologies, climate mitigation and adaptation, capital investment, state and local government, business, industry and labor.

Technology to deliver "dramatic" cuts in emissions already exists, but knowledge gaps and old habits mean progress in being made "at a snail's pace," argues the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in a new report. Energy savings in buildings could deliver larger CO2 cuts than the entire emissions of the transport sector based on 2050 projections, says the global business association in the latest progress report for its 'Energy Efficiency in Buildings' project.

Technology Review has a post on the benefits and challenges facing a new clean energy economy - The Clean Energy Economy: A New Industrial Revolution Rising From Challenging Times. In the last five years, many venture capitalists (myself included) have committed to backing entrepreneurs who aspire to build the next generation of clean energy companies that will endure. Thousands of companies have formed to harness alternative forms of energy like wind, solar and biofuels; and to reduce man's carbon footprint. Billions of dollars have been poured into this fledgling entrepreneurial ecosystem with the vision of creating significant wealth, millions of jobs, and energy security for our nation. When the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, entrepreneurs focused on the communications sector, and within a decade companies like Google, Yahoo and EBay became household names and changes heretofore unseen since the Industrial Revolution occurred. It's time for another Industrial Revolution, fueled by clean energy.

To take the heat out of global warming we must take radical action, learning to live on half the energy we currently consume. John-Paul Flintoff tries the low-watt diet.

The Environmental Protection Agency seems on the brink of issuing a new regulation that would make it easier for power plants to operate longer hours - and emit more pollution. Under the proposed rule, power plants would be able to measure their rate of emissions on an hourly basis instead of their annual total output. As long as the hourly emissions stay at or below the plant's established maximum, the plant would be treated as if it were operating cleanly - even if its total annual emissions increased as plant managers stepped up output. Under the current policy, power plants that seek to operate longer must install pollution-control equipment. The proposed rule, expected to be finalized in the next two weeks, would increase the life span of older power plants without owners having to install costly new pollution-control equipment.

The fate of scores of new coal-burning power plants is now in limbo over whether to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The uncertainty resulted when an Environmental Protection Agency appeals panel on Thursday rejected a federal permit for a Utah plant, leaving the issue for the Obama administration to resolve.

Who's going to control the local electric grid, and thus the city's energy future? Two months after Pacific Gas and Electric Co. spent $10 million to defeat a clean energy measure on the San Francisco ballot, Sup. Sophie Maxwell has stepped into the battle, introducing a mild ordinance that lifts some of the language from the Clean Energy Act but would accomplish very little. We're glad to see Maxwell stepping up her efforts to close the dirty Mirant Power Plant in Potrero Hill, but her legislation needs some significant amendments. Maxwell's ordinance, cosponsored by Sup. Aaron Peskin (who is one meeting away from being termed out), would make it city policy to "take all feasible steps" to close the Potrero plant. That's a laudable goal. It also borrows the aggressive environmental goals from the Clean Energy Act, stating that the city needs to meet all its energy needs by 2040 with renewable power. But unlike the Clean Energy Act, Maxwell's mandate ignores PG&E, which supplies the vast majority of the electricity in San Francisco and which can't even meet the state's weak alternative energy standards. Her requirement would apply only to the city's own power supplies, which come mostly from the Hetch Hetchy hydroelectric project and thus already meet the 2040 standards.

Driving home from a visit to a community gardening project this controversial statement was made by the local permaculture guru. A bit over-simplified I thought to myself. Well, I've been keeping an eye open... Since July 2007 I have been posting to Ecowar, a blog at Blogspot, whenever I encountered news and information supporting (or countering) the statement linking human conflict to spoils of the Earth. And I have actively sought out this type of information. Still am too.

Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama's choice to lead the Department of Energy, seems about as climate friendly as they come. As a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and director of the DOE-funded Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he has dedicated his career to weaning the globe from petroleum. But Chu, who declined to comment for this story, is also more industry friendly than his rhetoric suggests. Last year he sealed a deal between the Berkeley Lab, two public universities, and oil company BP, creating the largest university-industry alliance in US history, the $500 million Energy Biosciences Institute, to conduct biofuels research. The proposal sparked fierce opposition from faculty and students at the University of California-Berkeley, which will host the institute. Biology professor Ignacio Chapela called the partnership the "coup de grace to the very idea of a university that can represent the best interest of the public."