Energy & Fuel

The BP Gulf oil spill is inspiring re-evaluation of how to prevent low-probability but highly catastrophic environmental risks. In Oregon, the terminals and pipelines proposed for handling imported liquified natural gas are getting a very hard look.

"The Center for Biological Diversity Thursday filed a lawsuit against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Minerals Management Service to strike down the agency's exemption of 49 Gulf of Mexico drilling projects from all environmental review."

"The smart grid of the future will require new rivers of data flowing between utilities and customers. But who will carry the data, and how will it be channeled?"

"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says in a report to be delivered to the White House on Thursday that he will not consider applications for permits to drill in the Arctic until 2011. Shell Oil is poised to begin exploratory drilling this summer on leases as far as 140 miles offshore."

Water and energy -- two critical and often finite resources -- are today more than ever connected in complex ways. A new feature package explores the connection in stories that range from solar thermal plants in the Mojave Desert to an ocean thermal project near Tahiti. And the ongoing Gulf oil spill provides yet another lurid example.

"President Barack Obama, seeking a gas-sipping fleet of the future, will order the government to begin working on fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks in the 2017 model year and beyond."

"American Municipal Power, an Ohio nonprofit utility, will permanently retire its Richard H. Gorsuch Station coal-fired power plant near Marietta, Ohio under a settlement to resolve violations of the Clean Air Act."