Obama EPA second term agenda revealed « Hot Air

If you thought the War on Coal and various other job dampening EPA initiatives over the past few years were bad, apparently that was only a skirmish compared to what’s in store after this Tuesday. At the Examiner, Conn Carroll has the inside scoop on how Santa’s little elves at Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency have been very busy lately. But you might not care for the presents they have in mind for us all.

A Canceled BP Plant Calls into Question Cellulosic Ethanol Economics | MIT Technology Review

When BP backed out of building a $350 million, 36-million-gallon-per-year plant in Highlands County, Florida, last week, the cellulosic biofuels industry, which tries to make fuel from grass and wood chips, lost one of its most promising projects. The cancellation raises the question, if BP can’t bring cellulosic ethanol to market, can anyone?

BP had already started developing a 20,000-acre farm to grow special crops for the plant, such as a type of sugarcane that produces larger amounts of biomass and less sugar than the kind used to make sugar and ethanol in Brazil. As recently as last year, the CEO of BP Biofuels touted the project as evidence that “the technology is coming through” and a new “global commodity is starting to emerge.”

Changes to ETS threaten public health - NZ doctors

The New Zealand Climate and Health Council says climate change threatens people's health by increasing the risk of superstorms like giant storm Sandy that hit the US last week, changing patterns of tropical disease and ultimately threatening food and water supplies.

The New Nostradamus of the North: Time to uncork the champagne: Orders for offshore wind turbines have come to a halt in the UK

The Financial Times reports that orders for offshore wind turbines have come to an abrupt halt in the UK. This is seen as the first clear sign of a (most welcome) slowdown in renewable energy investment.