Editor's note: This is a modified version of Steve's orginal post which you can find in it's entirety

The Obama administration is proposing significant changes in US corporate taxes, as reported in today's Wall St. Journal. If enacted, the corporate tax rate would fall from 35% of income to 28%, although the elimination of numerous tax incentives would subject many companies, including most in the energy sector, to higher taxes overall.

According to the United Nations, 1.4 billion people—one in five globally—don’t have access to modern electricity, and 3 billion people still rely on solid fuels like wood and coal for cooking and heating.

First, they have to prove they can build one   This is my updated coverage from Fuel Cycle Week, V11:N460 for 02/16/12 published by International Nuclear Associates, Washington, DC. This is the second of two articles. 

US producers of bio-based products will be happy to know that President Obama signed a presidential memo yesterday that requires the federal government via the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) BioPreferred Program to track and increase its purchases of products made from plants and other renewable agricultural materials.

I’ll be the first to admit that cheap natural gas prices are one of the biggest short-term threats to deployment of renewable energy in the U.S. today. With a glut of gas dropping prices to historic lows, the competitiveness of technologies like wind, solar PV, and solar hot water are facing significant challenges.

We’ve long known about the hidden health and environmental costs associated with burning coal, but until very recently, no one questioned that it was a cheap source of electricity for utility customers.

It’s said that a smart man learns from his own mistakes but a truly wise man learns from other people’s mistakes. The U.S. can’t subscribe to the “it couldn’t happen to us” fallacy. In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster even countries once committed to nuclear power are rethinking their policies.

Few industries have got the black eye, literally and metaphorically, of mining. After centuries of environmental effects ranging from toxic emissions to unsightly tailings ponds, acid mine drainage, massive energy consumption and other impacts, mining is slowly cleaning up its act.

And now for something completely different…  Last week I gave a presentation at Renewable Energy World 2012 as a member of a panel entitled “Biomass Due Diligence: How Your Project Can Learn from Failure to Better Ensure Success.”  I provided the following retrospective on the biofuels experience and a few recommendations on improving due diligence. The Boom

The Brookings Institution’s Energy Security Initiative has been looking at the changing natural gas market including, among other things, potential issues surrounding LNG exports from the United States. Overall it looks like reasonable stuff.

While renewable energy is on the rise throughout the world, there are still a few firsts to be had. One of which goes to Honduras, which this month is firing up its very first wind power plant, the new 102-megawatt capacity Cerro de Hula Wind Farm.

Distributed Generation, DER, and microgrids offer innovative approaches to improve grid reliability and secure our energy independence from fossil fuels – two major sources of economic pain for Americans.

In an interview with Austrian newspaper Kurier at the end of the month, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem al-Badri went so far as to declare that “$100 a barrel doesn’t hurt the world economy at all.” As oil consuming nations struggle to climb out of global recession, does $100 per barrel constitute a reasonable price? Not likely.

The truth about NiMH battery technology may have less to do with conspiracies and technological obsolescence than with money. It takes a lot of money to play the R&D game in advanced automotive batteries. And it takes even more to build, manage and prosecute a portfolio of battery patents. BASF is the largest diversified chemical company in the world, with a market capitalization of about $58 billion and a history of successful research and development programs. By contract, Energy Conversion Devices declared bankruptcy the day after selling Ovonic. With a sophisticated and deep-pocketed company now backing the technology, the next few years could be very interesting for NiMH batteries.

Public electric vehicle charging stations are starting to pop around Houston and other cities in a noticeable fashion. According to eVgo, nine are currently operational around town (six of which are in parking lots of Walgreens stores).

Figures show that the UK and Germany have the largest deficit of allowances to pollute under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS), meaning they have to purchase more to meet their obligations.

Two French nuclear giants, EDF and Areva, and Rolls-Royce, the flagship nuclear firm in the UK, are signing deals worth {l}500 million ($791 million) to build new nuclear reactors in the UK

There are intense negotiations underway in Brussels and Strasbourg as the EU Parliament heads towards a key committee vote on the Energy Efficiency Directive at the end of this month. All this has come about because of concerns that Europe will not meet the third leg of its well known 20-20-20 by 2020 target, i.e. a 20% reduction in primary energy use compared with projected levels, to be achieved by improving energy efficiency.

For a long time ‘clean’ and ‘green’ marked the forward trend in the energy industry. Then came the quest for ‘smart’ energy. And now ‘innovation’ is the buzzword. But will energy innovation help the US job market? Or will the products be conceived here but be manufactured elsewhere?