Energy & Fuel

""The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) internal watchdog is launching a project to analyze the environmental impact of the federal ethanol mandate."

"The gooey, grayish-black sludge that spread across Roane County in East Tennessee on a bitterly cold December morning is gone, but the fallout from the nation's worst coal-ash spill enters a new phase on Monday when the federal government begins regulating the storage and disposal of ash from coal-fired power plants."

"A House of Representatives bill unveiled Friday could make it more difficult for the public to know how prepared railroads are for responding to oil spills from trains, their worst-case scenarios and how much oil is being transported by rail through communities."

"The Obama administration moved on several fronts Friday to block new oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, weeks after Shell said it would be walking away from the area 'for the foreseeable future.'"

"It’s 11.30am in the pumping heart of Canada’s tar sands industry, on a day when local crude is trading at a rock-bottom $29 a barrel. For the down-and-out men and women heading down to the free lunch in the basement of a Fort McMurray church, it’s hard to see a way back up."

"Ten of the world’s big oil companies, mainly from Europe, on Friday jointly acknowledged their industry’s role in global climate change and said that they agreed with the United Nations’ goals of limiting global warming."

"Toyota, under ambitious environmental targets, is aiming to sell hardly any regular gasoline vehicles by 2050, only hybrids and fuel cells, to radically reduce emissions."

"While boasting of pollution cuts at home, the United States is facilitating the sale of large quantities of government-owned coal abroad."

"The Supreme Court appeared to side Wednesday with energy industry groups in a case challenging the federal government’s authority to regulate electricity supply and demand."