Yet, despite the operation of New Jersey’s small wind project since January, there is uncertainty about whether wind farms, particularly gigantic turbines positioned off the region’s coastline, will be embraced here. On Long Island, a 40-turbine project being considered off the South Shore is facing stiff resistance from opponents who argue that the turbines will damage pristine ocean views, fail to deliver cost-effective electricity and create environmental problems. In New Jersey, powerful local politicians have lined up behind wind power, where up to 80 turbines — rising 380 feet or more above the water along the South Jersey coastline — have been proposed to take advantage of the near-constant breezes.

FINANCIAL TIMES: There has been some recent legislation on Co2 reduction. I wonder if you see that as one of the big developments of late, and what its significance is.

JEFFREY IMMELT: Yes. I think if you look at what some of the states are doing, California for instance, or even what's happening around the world, what's talked about in the UK, I think that's going to change the way people look at technology and it's going to change the way people look at energy policy in the future. It tends to be the way change starts. I would say in many ways some of the things that have happened in Europe over time have tended to drive technology. For instance, when Europe said it was going to have 10 per cent renewables that's what really opened up the world of wind energy and solar and things like that, so I think it's very meaningful.

WASHINGTON - Thanks to the high prices of oil and natural gas, the electricity industry is turning back to coal, America's oldest and most abundant fossil fuel, to drive a new generation of power plants. The upshot is that even as politicians take the threat of global warming more seriously, the problem may get much worse. Utilities are proposing to build 154 coal-fired power plants in the next 25 years, according to "Coal's Resurgence in Electric Power Generation," a recent Department of Energy report. Most of those new plants would use conventional coal-burning technology, which would increase carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. coal plants by more than 50 percent by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the analytic division of the Energy Department. A traditional coal plant produces three to four times more CO2 -- a potent "greenhouse gas" that traps the sun's heat and helps raise the Earth's temperature -- than comes from a modern plant that uses natural gas as its fuel.

power plant labelled one of the worst in the UK for pollution is to supply energy generated from wood shavings. The Didcot A station will now provide electricity for 100,000 homes created with the use of carbon-neutral fuels, as well as coal-fired power production. A new facility will use bio-mass fuels which absorb as much carbon dioxide when growing as they create when burnt.

Scottish & Southern Energy Group has become the first energy company to be hauled over the coals by the Advertising Standards Authority for failing to be able to back up claims that its green tariff offset its customers’ carbon emissions.....But while SSE was able to furnish the agency with figures showing the average CO2 emissions from waste and gas heating, it was unable to provide concrete evidence to show that the number of trees planted would meet or exceed this level. The ASA ruled that the advert breached guidelines on truthfulness and substantiation and told SSE not to use it again and not to make the claim in the future unless it was amended.

Business will welcome the Government's signals to follow trading partners on climate change policy and delay carbon emissions trading till after 2012. Energy Minister David Parker told a Climate Change Policy Symposium in Wellington yesterday that the Government believed economy-wide price-based measures for carbon emissions were likely to form the mix of post-2012 policies. Types of measures under consideration from 2012 were emissions trading and offset planting of forests. Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly said emissions trading would put a price on carbon and the Government was signalling that would not happen till 2012.

NIEDERAUSSEM, Germany -- Last year, to help combat global warming, Europe started charging industry for the right to spew hot air. For the first time on such a scale, governments slapped limits on the carbon-dioxide emissions of power plants, steelworks and other factories. Companies exceeding the caps have to buy CO2 "allowances" that trade on a European market. Because CO2 emissions now carry a cost, Germany's largest utility, RWE AG, is spending to improve the efficiency of its aging coal-fired power plants, including its biggest power station here in the country's industrial heartland.

A report prepared by Cape Wind consultants made public this week by the Minerals Management Service concluded that if a major spill did occur at the project's electrical service platform - which would hold up to 40,000 gallons of lubricating oil - there's a greater than 90 percent chance the oil would reach the shoreline. Based on oil flow and tide studies of Nantucket Sound, consultants from Applied Science Associates in Narragansett, R.I. found that the south shore of the Cape and eastern shore of Martha's Vineyard would likely face the biggest danger and that in extreme conditions, the oil could reach land in less than five hours.

Amid concern about global climate change, the state Legislature gave final approval Thursday to AB 32, a bill to combat global warming.

Kansas officials said Thursday they'd prefer to wait for the federal government to place new caps on carbon emissions rather than follow California's aggressive approach to curb global warming.

According to award-winning Harvard global warming researcher, Prof. Simon Ivorytower, global warming theory predicts increases in all kinds of weather. "Not only does global warming theory predict more storms, more droughts, more floods, it also predicts more normal weather as well. This is what makes global warming theory so powerful…it can explain anything", Prof. Ivorytower told ecoEnquirer.

Editor's Note: some light reading.

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) -- New York, New Jersey and five other Northeast states set a goal of cutting power-plant carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent over 10 years to help curb global warming.

We have submitted the attached comments to the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) in response to material filed by and on behalf of Highland New Wind Development (HNWD) purporting to quantify air pollution emission reductions that the Highland County wind project would achieve.

Editor's Note: The comments are available via the link below and on the Virginia Wind website

WHILE a stick-figure army of windmills is set to invade the landscape thanks to the State Government's new renewable energy policy, there is growing evidence that wind power will have little impact on the greenhouse crisis.

(CNSNews.com) - People sweltering from a heat wave in the Mid- Atlantic region of the U.S. might find cold comfort in the fact that the temperatures of the past few days are not the hottest on record. That "honor" belongs to a summer 76 years ago -- decades before the controversy over "man-made global warming" began.

Scientists are becoming uneasy about New Zealand's rising greenhouse gas emissions, and hopes of reaching a 2012 target are fading.

When the turbines go up, it’s not just the scenery that suffers, it's the atmosphere too. Ed Douglas reveals the environmental costs of wind power

Exxon spokesman David Gardner said the company believes the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may pose significant risk and that it has reduced greenhouse emissions at plants and refineries. "Our actions on carbon dioxide are widely misunderstood by many," he said in a telephone interview. He said cogeneration, or using waste heat and steam to produce electricity at plants, has reduced greenhouse gases by nine million metric tonnes per year. But Exxon has not set emissions limits and it does not invest in the production of wind and solar power because the company does not believe those technologies are economically viable yet, he said.

European and Asian companies are paying more attention to global warming than their American counterparts. And chemical companies are more focused on the issue than oil companies.

TULSA, Okla., Jan 31, 2006 -- BUSINESS WIRE Syntroleum Corporation (Nasdaq:SYNM) and Sustec AG, a private company based in Basel, Switzerland, announced today ....a joint venture aimed at converting coal and other carbonaceous materials such as petroleum-coke, residual fuel oil and biomass into ultra-clean fuels.