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NASA's 2010 map of temperature anomalies...

In the elusive search for the reliable energy source of the future, the prospect of clean coal is creating a lot of buzz. But while the concept-to scrub coal clean before burning, then capture and store harmful gases deep underground-may seem promising, a coalition of environment and climate groups argue in a new media campaign that the technology simply doesn't exist. The Alliance for Climate Protection and several other prominent organizations-including the Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council-launched a multipronged campaign to "debrand" the clean part of clean coal, pointing out that there's no conclusive evidence to confirm the entire process would work the way it's being marketed. In the campaign's TV ad, a technician sarcastically enters the door of a clean coal production plant, only to find there's nothing on the other side. "Take a good long look," he says, standing in a barren desert, "this is today's clean coal technology."

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.

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.

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.

The residue of millions of tons of coal burning at Kingston Fossil power plant in the Watts Bar Reservoir in Tennessee burst the bounds of the pond in which it was contained, burying as many as 400 acres of land in up to six feet of sludge. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which owns the coal-fired power plant-first operated in 1955-announced that 15 homes were buried and no injuries were reported. A combination of rains and accumulating sludge likely contributed to the disaster-one of two major ash pond collapses in the past decade. All told, about 2.6 million cubic yards of so-called coal ash slurry escaped, the TVA says. The collapsed pond is one of three on the site.

OPEC on Wednesday agreed to slash 2.2 million barrels from its daily production - its single largest cut ever - while bloc outsiders Russia and Azerbaijan announced their own cutbacks of hundreds of thousands of barrels from the market. "I hope we surprised you," OPEC President Chekib Khelil said when asked whether the size of the cut would shock moribund oil markets into an upward trend. "If you're not surprised we need to so something about it."

President-elect Barack Obama and leaders in Congress are fashioning a plan to pour billions of dollars into a jobs program to jolt the economy and lay the groundwork for a more energy-efficient economy. The details and cost of the so-called green-jobs program are still unclear, but a senior Obama aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a work in progress, said it would probably include the weatherizing of hundreds of thousands of homes, the installation of "smart meters" to monitor and reduce home energy use, and billions of dollars in grants to state and local governments for mass transit and infrastructure projects.

Washington civil servants are bracing for that personnel hurricane that sweeps through the federal bureaucracy every eight years or so, when a new administration places thousands of political appointees in all the top jobs -- and some not-so-top jobs. These bureaucrats call themselves the "we-be's" -- as in, "We be there when you arrive, and we be there when you leave." They enjoy a sometimes uneasy coexistence with the political appointees, adapting themselves to the priorities of a new administration, sometimes pushing back and influencing policy themselves. While those career staffers have a grasp of the critical issues, they are clearly in subordinated positions to both the political appointees and the elected officials, who are the ones held accountable by the people.

About 350 people attended a meeting on a proposed $2 billion uranium enrichment plant planned by French-owned Areva SA to make fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors. The meeting was held by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to outline its licensing process for the plant, slated to be operating by 2014. In a community that's been home to the Idaho National Laboratory since 1949, many at Wednesday's event said they were eager for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow construction of the proposed plant to be located about 20 miles from Idaho Falls.

Today's announcement that Joseph Kelliher, chairman of the powerful Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and a commissioner since 2003, is stepping down provides President-elect Barack Obama with an opportunity to fix an agency with a history of promoting deregulation and power company profits at the expense of fair energy prices to American families. Under Kelliher's watch, FERC continued the failed policy of deregulation, resulting in consumers paying billions of dollars more in home energy costs than if markets under FERC control had been properly regulated. Kelliher, who served as the Energy Department's liaison to Vice President Dick Cheney's infamously corporate-biased Energy Task Force prior to becoming FERC commissioner, consistently overlooked the agency's top statutory mandate: to ensure that all electric rates be "just and reasonable."As a result, Kelliher's FERC has undergone ongoing criticism by states and consumer groups for its backward priorities.

Nearly a dozen times over the past century, San Francisco voters have rejected ballot measures to support a takeover of the city's privately run electricity system. But advocates of public power haven't given up their goal of wresting control from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and this year are linking support of the measure to combating global warming and securing energy independence.

Shares of General Motors Corp. soared in afternoon trading, reversing the morning's historic plummet, on news of a deal that could result in a financial bailout of the automaker industry. But the plan, which could throw the Detroit Three a government lifeline worth billions, still faces an uphill battle in a reluctant Senate.

When he takes office, President-elect Obama will face a mountain of challenges - more than any incoming president in recent history: the global financial crisis, the Iraq War, the federal deficit, the energy crisis and more. The most critical thing this new president can do, though - which must be done to make any policy solution a success - is restore the citizen's seat at the government's table. One of the worst outcomes of the past eight years has been the erosion of democracy and the phasing out of the people's voice in the government. It is imperative that this be reversed.

A former top EPA investigator who helped lead an investigation into a giant oil spill in Alaska is blowing the whistle to KING 5 News. The investigator says it should have been a felony criminal case. So was oil giant BP let off the hook? KING 5's environmental specialist Gary Chittim talked with the investigator in an exclusive report.

The Bush administration gave energy companies steep discounts in the royalties they will be required to pay as it established the groundwork Monday for commercial oil shale development on federal land. Interior Department officials said the 5 percent royalty rate during the first five years of production was needed to spur drilling while still giving taxpayers a fair return. But that rate is much lower than the 12.5 percent to 18.8 percent the government collects from companies harvesting conventional oil and gas on public lands.

The natural gas industry refuses to reveal what is in the mixture of chemicals used to drill for the fossil fuel State regulators and Washington lawmakers though are increasingly impatient with voluntary measures and are seeking to toughen their oversight. In September U.S. Congresswoman Diana DeGette and Congressman John Salazar, from Colorado, and Congressman Maurice Hinchey, from New York, introduced a bill that would undo the exemptions in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Wyoming, widely known for supporting energy development, has begun updating its regulations at a local level, as have parts of Texas. New Mexico has placed a one year moratorium on drilling around Santa Fe, after a survey found hundreds of cases of water contamination from unlined pits where fracking fluids and other drilling wastes are stored. "Every rule that we have improved . . . industry has taken us to court on," said Joanna Prukop, New Mexico's cabinet secretary for Energy Minerals and Natural Resources. "It's industry that is fighting us on every front as we try to improve our government enforcement, protection, and compliance… We wear Kevlar these days."

Scientists, environmentalists and government and industry officials from around the world meet this week for a summit on greenhouse gas emissions that their host, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, hopes will highlight the economic benefits of pursuing green technologies. The conference, which begins Tuesday in Beverly Hills with some 700 participants expected, is an attempt by the Republican governor to influence a U.N. gathering in Poland next month.

Water is needed to generate energy. Energy is needed to deliver water. Both resources are limiting the other-and both may be running short. Is there a way out? In June the state of Florida made an unusual announcement: it would sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the corps's plan to reduce water flow from reservoirs in Georgia into the Apalachicola River, which runs through Florida from the Georgia-Alabama border. Florida was concerned that the restricted flow would threaten certain endangered species. Alabama also objected, worried about another species: nuclear power plants, which use enormous quantities of water, usually drawn from rivers and lakes, to cool their big reactors. The reduced flow raised the specter that the Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan, Ala., would need to shut down.

Bunnatine Greenhouse sits in a cubicle in a far corner of an office in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers(USACE) headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., where, she says, "I am treated like a non-person." Months crawl by yet her immediate supervisor just can't seem to find the time to meet with her to discuss a work assignment. The taxpayers of the United States of America pay her salary, but, oddly, no demands are made of her.