"In the last-minute rush in Congress to finalize spending for the current fiscal year and head home for the holidays, one of the losers appears to be USEC, the uranium enrichment company, and the politics are more convoluted than ever.
Some building codes in Texas are forcing new homes to be more energy-efficient.
"MONTPELIER, Vt. -- The likely death of a planned nuclear waste site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain has left federal agencies looking for a possible replacement. A national lab working for the U.S. Department of Energy is now eying granite deposits stretching from Georgia to Maine as potential sites, along with big sections of Minnesota and Wisconsin where that rock is prevalent."
"At a fall retreat, board members of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental advocacy group, listened as a political consultant gave a critique of the green movement."
"The federal spending bill before Congress is a no-spending bill for the Energy Department when it comes to enforcing new efficiency standards for light bulbs. But the new standards for light bulbs — signed into law in 2007 — would remain in place, meaning the effort to stem the new rules might mean little at the end of the day."
"A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight."
"China has further revised up its solar power development target for 2015 by 50 percent from its previous plan, state media reported on Thursday."
"The shutdown-averting budget bill will block federal light bulb efficiency standards, giving a win to House Republicans fighting the so-called ban on incandescent light bulbs."
"The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed on Wednesday to increase its production target for the first time in three years, a move that appeared to signal that Saudi Arabia and Iran had put aside their recent differences on oil policy, at least temporarily.
"BP and the oil industry drilling in the Gulf of Mexico lacked the proper safety attitude to handle the large risks of deepwater drilling, leading to the many bad decisions behind the nation's worst offshore spill, a panel of expert engineers said today.
More specifically, the industry needs to radically redesign the blowout preventers that are meant to be a last line of defense against runaway wells or else risk a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the National Academy of Engineering concluded.
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