"The development of offshore wind farms took another halting step forward Thursday with the federal approval of a research facility off Virginia’s coast to test wind turbines in a harsh open seas environment."

"The cozy relationship between state oil and gas regulators and the industry they monitor is typified by a revolving door of officials who leave the Texas Railroad Commission to lobby for energy companies, including several who recently departed and made six-figure salaries working the Capitol hallways last year."

"The ground east of the Rockies is far more likely to shake this year with damaging though not deadly earthquakes, federal seismologists report in a new risk map for 2016."

"A $2.5-billion transmission line carrying wind power to the U.S. Southeast is coming -- whether state regulators there like it or not."

"Wyoming regulators downplayed health concerns, glossed over ambiguities and made unsubstantiated claims about the source of contamination in their study of the polluted drinking water east of Pavillion, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency review shows."

"Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 goes right under Lake Michigan at the Straits of Mackinac."

"China helped push global green energy investment plans to record heights in 2015, offsetting a sharp fall in Germany, authors of a U.N.-backed report said on Thursday, predicting further growth."

"The Obama administration is fighting in federal court to defend its hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rule, saying a lower court committed a “legal error” when it put the regulation on hold."

"More than 300 climate activists swarmed the Louisiana Superdome Wednesday morning to protest a federal auction of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The action was part of the larger "Keep It in the Ground" movement aimed at stopping new fossil fuel production on publicly owned lands and waterways."

"Three years after an eruption of 10,000 barrels of melted bitumen contaminated the boreal forest and groundwater near Cold Lake, Alberta, the provincial energy regulator has now officially blamed hydraulic fracturing, or the pressurized injection of steam into the ground for fracturing nearby rock."