"Long before the Energy Department lost $68 million on Abound Solar, a manufacturer that went bankrupt two years ago, it should have known that the company’s chance of repaying the loan it had guaranteed was deteriorating, according to a report by the department’s inspector general."

"The Environmental Protection Agency said it will delay for a month issuing a rule to shield fish from being killed when electric utilities and factories use water for cooling machinery."

"In 1997, Toyota caught its competitors by surprise with the revolutionary Prius, the first commercially successful gasoline-electric hybrid car. Now, the Japanese firm is trying to do the same with a technology that seems straight out of science fiction."

"On Tuesday night, BP said that the 'active cleanup' of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill had been brought 'to a close.' Later Tuesday night, the Coast Guard said the response to the spill isn’t over yet, 'not by a long shot.'"

"Louisiana's coast is disappearing at the rate of about a football field an hour. Since the 1930s, the Gulf of Mexico has swallowed up an area the size of Delaware."

"Oilfields are spinning off thousands of tons of low-level radioactive trash as the U.S. drilling boom leads to a surge in illegal dumping and states debate how much landfills can safely take."

"WASHINGTON -- Last year, the U.S. wind energy industry chalked up a record number of projects and generating capacity under construction. By year end, private corporations invested billions of dollars, and new records for generation were set in many locations, according to the U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report Year Ending 2013, released Thursday by the American Wind Energy Association, AWEA."

"The United States needs to enact a major climate change law, such as a tax on carbon pollution, by the end of this decade to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of global warming, according to the authors of a report released this week by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
 

"Jodi Ross, town manager in Westford, Mass., did not expect she would be threatened with arrest after she and her fire chief went onto the railroad tracks to find out why a train carrying liquid petroleum gas derailed on a bridge in February. But as they reached the accident site northwest of Boston, a manager for Pan Am Railways called the police, claiming she was trespassing on rail property. The cars were eventually put back on the tracks safely, but the incident underlined a reality for local officials dealing with railroads."

"Drilling at several natural gas wells in southwestern Pennsylvania released methane into the atmosphere at rates that were 100 to 1,000 times higher than federal regulators had estimated, new research shows."