The nation continues to chart an independent course

Corn growers and ethanol producers want to expand their market by selling a new, higher-blend ethanol fuel that’s safe to use in most vehicles.

As governments roll out public policy directing increased biofuel production for all sectors of the transportation industry, serious questions around environmental sustainability still remain.Although the food versus fuel debate -- should arable land be used to grow energy crops, or food crops be used to fuel our cars instead of our bodies -- has long been a part of the biofuel story, the issue is becoming more complex.

The U.S. Department of Commerce today handed down it’s preliminary report on alleged dumping by Chinese solar manufacturers in the US market.

København har reduceret byens CO2-udslip med 20 procent fire år før planlagt. Forbilledligt, mener ekspert.

Recent estimates from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) show that emissions of air pollutants that harm human health in the Houston region are falling dramatically. This excellent development is largely the result of very successful national regulations to reduce tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles.

(DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) Pollution is warming the atmosphere through summer thunderstorm clouds, according to a computational study published May 10 in Geophysical Research Letters. How much the warming effect of these clouds offsets the cooling that other clouds provide is not yet clear. To find out, researchers need to incorporate this new-found warming into global climate models.

(Stanford University) Intricate, often invisible chains of life are threatened with extinction around the world. A new study quantifies one of the longest such chains ever documented.

(University at Buffalo) University at Buffalo researchers are making significant progress on rust-proofing steel using a graphene-based composite that could serve as a nontoxic alternative to coatings that contain hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen.

(University of Leeds) Scientists at the University of Leeds are looking to discover how dust particles in the solar system interact with the Earth's atmosphere.

Spanish wind-power company Gamesa is pulling the plug on Virginia. Gamesa’s first offshore wind turbine prototype was planned for installation off Cape Charles, Va., but now the company says it will cite the turbine in Arinaga Quay in the Canary Islands.

The Obama administration is poised to make one of the biggest climate policy decisions of its entire administration – and it’s not about coal, oil, or gas, but rainforests. EPA is deciding whether or not palm oil should be included in the Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates that American motorists use 36 billion gallons of biofuel in their cars and trucks by 2022.

Chesapeake Energy has been in the news a lot, lately, concerning both the significant challenges it faces in financing its ambitious development program, and its high-profile CEO, who was recently forced to relinquish his role as Chairman. The company's stock is trading for half its value one year ago and less than a fourth of its 2008 peak.

Another year, another wringing of the hands over tax credits and incentives for clean technology. It’s time to end government handouts in clean technology, policymakers need to focus on setting mandates and standards and start ratcheting back subsidies and credits.

Researchers in Finland are claiming a form of solar cells that can be applied to surfaces as a coat of paint could herald the future of solar energy. They are inexpensive to produce compared to the complex and expensive clean-room manufacturing processes associated with current silicon-based solar panels.

Just a thought, but how great would it be if one of this fall’s presidential debates focused solely on energy issues?Past presidential debates have discussed the economy and jobs, national security and foreign policy, and of course all of those are important. Yet, when you think about it, energy is the nexus where all come together.

(Geological Society of America) New Lithosphere articles posted online May 16, 2012, report on (1) seismic anisotropy measured beneath 14 broadband stations in southeastern India; why geoscientists should persist in their efforts to reach and study such spectacular sub-sea geologic features as the Mariana Trench (recently explored by film director James Cameron) and how "land geologists" can help this effort by studying on-land equivalents like ophiolites; and (3) pressures and melting temperatures of sediments deeply buried in Earth's mantle.

(University of Texas at Austin) The effect of global warming could potentially be ameliorated by engineering ways to reflect more sunlight back into space, according to a report by a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.The report, by Professor J. Eric Bickel and Hudson Institute Fellow Lee Lane, was selected by a panel of international experts as one of 16 areas of research that governments and philanthropists should prioritize to respond to the world's most pressing challenges.

(Stanford University) The Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium -- an industry-supported program led by Stanford University and the University of California-Berkeley -- has announced its first research grants aimed at making utility-scale solar power cost-competitive by the end of the decade.