LANSING (AP) — Retired second-grade teacher Jean Veselenak drove four hours to tell state regulators what she fears would happen if a new coal-fired power plant is built in her community along Lake Huron in northern Michigan.
She believes the environment would be polluted with more mercury — a toxin that can damage children’s nervous systems [...]

Ukraine and Russia said the supply of natural gas to Europe was completely shut off Wednesday, but each side blamed the other for the cut-off, which comes as Europe faces a wave of freezing temperatures.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian state-run gas company, Naftogaz Ukrainy, told CNN that Russian gas giant Gazprom had turned off all [...]

An analyst says a Sempra Generation project powering California homes beats conventional sources on cost-effectiveness.
By Marla Dickerson
Generating clean electricity that’s as cheap as power from fossil fuels is the Holy Grail of green-energy companies. A new solar project powering California homes appears to be closing in on that prize.
Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy [...]

Biofuel, wind, solar companies take a hit in ‘08
by Dirk Lammers
AP Energy Writer
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Alternative energy stocks were battered on Wall Street in 2008 as volatile commodity prices, a continuing global recession and tightening credit markets drove one ethanol company into bankruptcy protection and sent shares of others down more than 90 percent.
Wind [...]

A consortium of governments will build a groundbreaking fusion power plant in France for a price in excess of €5 billion. After decades of discouraging setbacks, plasma physics has made jaw-dropping recent progress. Could it save the world?
Something went wrong during reactor experiment number 23,995. The fusion process started, continued for a second, but suddenly [...]

By JOHN G. EDWARDS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
The electric utility serving Las Vegas is preparing to consider its first investment in a geothermal power project in Northern Nevada, using a method just approved by state regulators.
Nevada Power Co., which does business as NV Energy, plans to enter a joint ownership agreement with Ormat Nevada, a geothermal [...]

By Marc Levy Associated Press Writer
HOUSTON, Pa. — Illuminated drilling rigs glow for miles from atop flattened hills when night falls in this rolling farm and coal country in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Tanker trucks back up traffic on two-lane roads, and Texans wearing heavy coats and muddy boots fill Shelley’s Pike Diner at lunch as land owners [...]

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar’s government and four foreign companies have signed an agreement to sell natural gas from offshore fields to neighboring China, state media said Monday.
The agreement, signed last Wednesday, was the first for sales of gas from Myanmar’s northwestern offshore fields.
The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said South Korea’s Daewoo International and [...]

China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), parent company of PetroChina, signed last Sunday a framework agreement with south China’s Hunan province, under which CNPC will invest 3 billion yuan (around US $438.23 million) to construct natural gas projects in this area.
Under the framework, Hunan provincial government granted CNPC the franchise operation right on natural gas in [...]

MOSCOW – Russia’s state natural gas monopoly OAO Gazprom warned Saturday that a pricing dispute with Ukraine could disrupt gas supplies to Europe.
Ukraine could use its pipeline to divert Russian natural gas intended for European customers even if it fails to pay its multibillion debt to Gazprom by Jan. 1, said company spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov.
If [...]