Economy & Business

China is showing none of the hesitancy that marks the U.S. effort to train people for clean-energy jobs. One result is that China is poised to beat the U.S. in the contest for developing a clean-energy economy.

"The major U.S. ethanol incentive would be cut by 20 percent but given one more year of life in a Senate tax bill that also would revive a biodiesel tax credit that died a year ago."

"Oil and gas operators could economically capture nearly half their flared or vented natural gas on federal land to boost government royalties and reduce heat-trapping emissions, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released yesterday."

"Subsidies and tariffs to promote domestic ethanol production are “fiscally irresponsible and environmentally unwise” and should be ended, a bipartisan group of United States senators declared in a letter to the chamber’s leaders on Tuesday."

"Contractors working for Dow Chemical and Sasol North America, a chemical manufacturer, hired private investigators to conduct a two-year corporate espionage campaign against the environmental group Greenpeace, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday in federal district court in Washington."

"The U.S. is losing its edge in energy innovation to China, and it's time to reclaim it for the sake of future economic prosperity, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a speech on Monday."

The US-owned bottled water giant Fiji Water shut down operations in the military-ruled Pacific nation of Fiji Monday, after the nation raised the tax on pumping the water the firm exports.

Some transnational technology corporations see billions of dollars of business opportunity in China's rollout of a "smart grid" energy infrastructure in the next five years. No plans of comparable scale exist in the U.S.

"Now that the Cleantech Open –- the self-described Academy Awards of the clean-technology industry -– is over, we have some new, young companies to watch."