"Japan shuts down its last working nuclear power reactor this weekend just over a year after a tsunami scarred the nation and if it survives the summer without major electricity shortages, producers fear the plants will stay offline for good."

"Climate change and oil dependence are issues of national security, and the Pentagon will take a lead role in shifting the way the country uses energy, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said [Wednesday] night."

"WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy has successfully completed an unprecedented test of harvesting the vast storehouse on Alaska’s North Slope of methane hydrate, essentially natural gas locked in ice crystals under the permafrost.

"With Asia's energy demands pulling more U.S. coal to West Coast ports, rail-line communities across Montana fear the effects: More train traffic, health problems, noise and congestion."

"Edison International announced Wednesday that Midwest Generation will shutter Chicago's Fisk and Crawford coal plants in September, ahead of schedule and years before a state-imposed deadline to clean up or shut down the plants.

"A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted."

"HOUSTON -- Aubrey K. McClendon built Chesapeake Energy into the nation’s second-largest producer of natural gas through a combination of debt, foresight, luck and sheer bravado. Now both he and the company have been forced to add humility to the mix."

"Some of the main proposals in a draft text for negotiation at a U.N. sustainable development conference next month are being watered down at informal talks in New York, observers said on Tuesday, heightening fears the summit will fail to deliver."