Energy Secretary Steven Chu says he will provide $2.4 billion from the economic recovery package to speed up development of technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and factories that burn coal. Chu told a meeting of the National Coal Council on Friday that it's essential that ways are found to capture carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants and industrial sources. Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the leading greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

Republicans in the House Energy and Commerce committee are considering introducing about 450 amendments during the mark-up of climate change legislation next week, according to a working list obtained by POLITICO. Many of the potential amendments would lower the environmental standards set forth in the bill, or could make it more difficult for Democrats to vote to support it. The committee is scheduled to spend all next week marking-up the climate and energy bill sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman, (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey, (D-Mass.) Waxman, the chairman of the committee, has spent months negotiating a deal with southern and Midwestern Democrats who fear the new regulations capping greenhouse gases could hurt businesses and consumers at homes. On Thursday, Virginia Rep. Rich Boucher - who's acted as a lead negotiator for skeptical Democrats - endorsed the bill, a signal that it could have enough support to pass the committee.

President Obama's $26.4 billion Department of Energy (DOE) budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2010 substantially increases new cash for the development of renewable energies, energy efficiency, and for measures to curb carbon dioxide emissions, but it cuts funding to coal and nuclear programs-fuels that produce 70% of the nation's electricity. The proposed FY 2010 budget, which would take effect on October 1 if approved by Congress, complements $38.7 billion the DOE will invest as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week detailed the budget request, highlighting major funding changes from FY 2009. He stressed that while the budget makes important investments in energy independence and job creation, it also cuts back on programs that don't work as well or are no longer needed. Favoring Renewables Among the major increases were to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). Its budget of $2.3 billion-an increase of 6% over FY 2009-builds on the Recovery Act funding of $16.8 billion. Solar energy got the biggest boost, gaining $320 million, an 83% increase from FY 2009. Wind received $75 million (a 36% increase from FY 2009), geothermal got $50 million (14% increase), while biomass and biorefinery systems research and development gained $235 million (8% increase).

Home and commercial builders are furious at a new energy-efficiency rule that could tack an extra $10,000 or more to the cost of new houses and office complexes. The state's Board of Building Regulations and Standards yesterday approved the so-called "stretch energy code" that allows tougher testing to make sure new structures comply with enhanced energy-efficiency requirements.

In remarks delivered Tuesday at the 11th annual Electric Power Conference & Exhibition in Rosemont, Illinois, power industry executives called for more realism and integrity in the Obama administration's energy and environmental initiatives. While praising the creativity and commitment of the administration's energy team, panelists said that what is needed right now is less creativity and more practicality around energy and environmental issues.

It's interesting how none of the proponents of Waxman-Markey would point to the text, but it's not hard to find. It's linked here and is officially called the "American Clean Energy and Security Act". Although it is one of those things intimidatingly described as being over 600 pages long, it was very amusing to discover that the margins and font size match what you'd expect for a nine-year-old's primer. There are about 200 words per page at most. So, though inhumanely formatted, the entire thing is only about 120,000 words. Not an easy thing to read but not overwhelming either. Where did this come from? Waxman and Markey's staffs? Lobbyists? Anyway it is proportionally less mysterious at 200 words per page than at the 1000 or so I imagined. (This is the first time I ever looked at draft legislation.) The claim for the legislation is as follows: The American Clean Energy and Security Act will create millions of new clean energy jobs, save consumers hundreds of billions of dollars in energy costs, enhance America's energy independence, and cut global warming pollution. To meet these goals, the legislation has four titles:

Lights have been turned back on for about 28,600 Ameren Illinois Utilities (AIU) customers in Southern Illinois, while more than 1,400 field and support personnel continue to repair the extensive damage caused by Friday's inland hurricane. Throughout the day, field crews have encountered major unexpected damage to the AIU electrical distribution system in and around Carbondale. As a result, the AIU Emergency Operations Center is sending additional field personnel and specialized equipment to help overcome the enormous damage caused by the exceptionally violent spring storm. At 5:20 p.m. today, about 40,200 AIU customers are still without electric service, down from the peak outage count of 68,800 customers. The Ameren Illinois Utilities now anticipate the majority of all customers will have their lights back on by late Tuesday night. However, the unexpected severity of the damage in Carbondale means that service in and around that city may not be fully restored until Thursday.

I spent last week immersed in the views of professionals working to advance energy efficiency resource intelligence. I shall spare you more details-I realize there's a limit to the wonkery even Grist's audience can tolerate-but I do want highlight what strikes me as a key takeaway. A few facts to set the stage: * Resource intelligence is profitable. Study after study (after study) shows that homes and businesses have available a range of investments, technologies, and practices that cut energy use and pay handsome returns. (See, for the latest, this three-year study of efficiency in buildings.) * Resource intelligence isn't happening on its own. This is something speaker after speaker at the conference returned to, with attitudes ranging from frustration to simple bemusement. Despite the aforementioned studies, people aren't taking advantage of the opportunities at anything close to the available scale. The low-hanging fruit stubbornly remains unplucked. * Resource intelligence is central to the climate/energy challenge. The International Energy Agency describes a scenario for achieving 450 ppm (the widely shared though likely inadequate target for atmospheric concentrations of CO2). Of the emission reductions they project, energy efficiency is responsible for 54%. More than half our efforts to tackle climate change will happen through more intelligent use of energy.

Federal regulators said Friday that Fort Chicago Energy Partners LP's (FCE.UN.T) proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in the Pacific Northwest could be built without significant environmental losses, paving the way for possible approval. In a final environmental impact statement, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the Jordan Cove LNG import terminal proposed near the Oregon coast, plus a 234-mile natural gas pipeline that would ship imported gas from the terminal to nearby interstate pipelines, could be built in a way that minimizes the potential threat of earthquakes, accidents and a terrorist attack, as well as potential harm to soil, wetlands and water resources.

This week global activist group Avaaz began airing a spoof ad that takes direct aim at ExxonMobil's cheery ad campaign featuring scientists talking about how they're making the clean energy of the future. A company spokesman responded to the ad: "They seem to be critical of our desire to communicate our positions on climate change, which we don't understand." Funny -- we don't understand your position on climate change either, ExxonMobil! (zing). You say you want to make the world cleaner through chemistry, but then you lobby hard to make sure that won't happen. See the videos -- and help get Avaaz's ad on CNN -- below.

Governor Sarah Palin is notorious for not accepting, and then accepting federal funding--who could forget the good ol' bridge to nowhere debacle? Well something similar is happening again: Palin has decided to accept all the stimulus funds eligible to Alaska--except the $29 million that would go to her state energy office. Why say "thanks, but no thanks" to $29 million dollars? Because she's afraid it would require her to make Alaskan buildings more energy efficient. According to the NY Times, Palin said off the decision: "Alaska's vast expanse and differing conditions are not conducive to a federally mandated, universal energy code . . . Mandating universal energy building codes throughout our state is not in Alaskans' common or individual interests."

Norma Fiorentino's drinking water well was a time bomb. For weeks, workers in her small northeastern Pennsylvania town had been plumbing natural gas deposits from a drilling rig a few hundred yards away. They cracked the earth and pumped in fluids to force the gas out. Somehow, stray gas worked into tiny crevasses in the rock, leaking upward into the aquifer and slipping quietly into Fiorentino's well. Then, according to the state's working theory, a motorized pump turned on in her well house, flicked a spark and caused a New Year's morning blast that tossed aside a concrete slab weighing several thousand pounds.

Coal River Vally, WV, has become home to a civil disobedience campaign against Massy Energy company in an attempt to halt their destructive mountaintop renewal coal mining practices. Kay Sexton, with her regular run down of environmental protests, has been examining the "imperatives and complexities" of protests that are unique to the environmentalist movement. Here's another data point to add into the discussion. I've mentioned before that I don't always think that the environmental movement benefits from protests. Channeling the Greenpeace mentality of chaining people to trees often seems to generate bad press more then it advances a cause. But, there are times when even my cynical take on the efficacy of protest has to be subverted by out-and-out necessity.

The Interior Department will announce new rules today that clear the way for the first offshore wind turbines to be erected along the Atlantic Coast. The rules will set long-awaited guidelines for offshore leases, easements and royalty payments that the Bush administration worked on for years but did not complete.

This earth2tech post comments on a presentation from Rich Sedano at the Ceres conference this week in San Francisco. Rich has been working on electricity regulatory issues, demand response, and institutional design for a long time, and his insights as reported here are very important and frequently overlooked: The way Sedano sees it, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees Wall Street credit rating agencies, and state-level utility regulators have failed to communicate and, by extension, to establish consistent rules and incentives - leaving utilities "waiting for a sign that it's safe to pull the trigger on an investment and hoping they don't miss the opportunity to do the right thing."

Peak oil isn't getting much airtime in the mainstream press lately, but David Strahan has a column in The Independent - A Government still addicted to petrol. "All targets and no trousers" seemed to be the gist of the reaction from environmentalists to last week's Budget. Greens welcomed the introduction of new, legally binding, carbon-reduction goals but attacked the lack of a clear road map showing how they could be achieved. Some applauded policies such as the extra subsidy for offshore wind and investment in building efficiency, but attacked overall funding of £1.4bn as miserly in comparison to the enormity of the climate crisis and recent financial bailouts.

In remarks focused on the promise of renewable energy and demand-side management, US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff on Wednesday suggested that there may never be another new nuclear or coal power plant built in the country. Pointing to upwards of 1,000 GW of potential wind energy in the Midwest and West, new solar power production and storage technologies and emerging hydrokinetic power resources, Wellinghoff asserted that renewables are poised to play a substantial, gap-filling role in the US energy picture.

With international global warming talks scheduled to get under way in Denmark later this year, stakeholders from across the globe will be paying close attention when a House subcommittee takes up a landmark energy and climate change bill later this month. European nations and others have been clamoring for years for decisive U.S. action on warming, and the House measure - dubbed the American Clean Energy and Security Act by sponsors Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) - represents the first cap-and-trade bill seen as actually having a shot at being signed into law.

Police arrested 44 anti-coal activists engaged in acts of civil disobedience today to protest expansion of Duke Energy's Cliffside coal-fired power plant. Those arrested will likely be charged with second degree trespassing. Event organizers Stop Cliffside have declared to protest a success: Duke EnergyScryve Corporate Social Responsibility Rating CEO Jim Rogers has publicly said that all of Duke's coal power plants will be shut down by 2050, but considering that many climate change scientists consider shutting down coal-fired power plants to be the single greatest thing that can be done to curb emissions, Rogers' promises have been received with little fanfare.

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released its annual assessment of utility green power programs. According to the analysis, more than 850 utilities across the United States now offer green power programs. Green power sales in 2008 increased by about 20 percent over 2007, and they represent more than 5 percent of total electricity sales for some of the most popular programs. Wind is the primary source of electricity generated for green energy programs nationwide. Using information provided by utilities, NREL developed top ten ranking of utility programs for 2008 in the following categories: * Total sales of renewable energy to program participants * Total number of customer participants * The percentage of customer participation * Green power sales as a percentage of total utility retail electricity sales * Lowest price premium charged for a green power program using new renewable resources