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."
"The president's deficit commission proposed slashing energy tax breaks yesterday, a move that could make renewable power more competitive and help chisel down greenhouse gas emissions. But the plan is brimming with political pitfalls and vagueness around whether clean power subsidies might also be axed to curb the nation's rising debt."
"The Obama administration on Wednesday reversed its plans to expand offshore drilling along the Atlantic coast and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico in a retreat prompted by last summer's oil spill."
"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's announcement about a 'cautious' approach to offshore oil development opens the door to leasing new waters in the Arctic after 2012 and clears the way for full review of a proposed new exploratory well in the Beaufort Sea as early as next summer."
"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."
"The New York State Assembly voted 93 to 43 Monday night to place a temporary moratorium on a controversial type of natural gas exploration that combines hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling."
"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."
"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."
Over the past decade, coal-burning electric power plants have been increasingly replaced by gas-burning plants. While this has helped the environment, the utility companies are motivated largely by the chance to save money. Meanwhile, 10,000 congregations in 38 states, joined through Interfaith Power & Light, are acting to shift the nation toward cleaner power because they think it is the moral thing to do.
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