A federal panel charged with assessing Cape Wind's impact on dozens of historic sites includes an architect, an anthropologist and a Texan who runs one of the nation's largest beer distributors. Last week, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation identified a five-member Cape Wind review panel, as a final federal ruling on the controversial offshore wind farm appears on the horizon.

A group of Wampanoag tribes who say they've been cast aside on issues from the Nantucket Sound wind farm to the future of gaming are breaking away to create a new council to deal with state government. The state-recognized tribes are calling on Gov. Deval Patrick to disband the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs, the current liaison to state tribes.

U.S. banks had looked forward to a huge "cap-and-trade market" a system where companies would buy and sell the right to emit gases blamed for warming the planet. Many hired carbon traders, picked up assets, and trained members of energy desks to deal in emissions markets. But prospects for a broad U.S. carbon market have dimmed. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican working on a compromise climate bill, declared economy-wide cap-and-trade "dead" this month.

The Energy Department worked closely with the wind industry lobby to discredit a Spanish report that criticized wind power as a job killer, internal DOE e-mails reveal. ...The e-mails show the wind lobbyists shared their concerns with DOE employees, who agreed the study needed to be refuted. In August, DOE produced a white paper specifically attacking the study.

But environmental activists have tried to block the project, arguing that several endangered bird species in nearby forest could lose some of their habitat. The land abuts Guanica State Forest, where endangered nightjars and other creatures breed and nest. Francisco Saez, spokesman of the Pro Bosque Seco Ventanas Verraco Coalition, said the wind energy project belongs elsewhere.

The wind industry will hit Congress this week in a lobbying blitz aimed at securing a national requirement that utilities generate some power from renewable sources and stopping a Senate measure that would prohibit federal grants from going to companies that manufacture outside the United States. ...The lobbying effort comes as lawmakers debate policies the wind industry says would slow manufacturing and kill jobs.

Senator Lamar Alexander expressed concern on Tuesday over the siting of renewable energy projects during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, of which he is the ranking member. "We've spent more than a century and billions of dollars of public and private money protecting certain landscapes and scenic areas," Sen. Alexander told Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

Area municipalities and the Essex Region Conservation Authority should develop a regional response to the 700 offshore turbines proposed for lakes Erie and St. Clair, Kingsville council agreed Monday. "It appears to me the whole thing is stacked against municipalities and citizens," Coun. Tamara Stomp said of the new Green Energy Act.

Not many years ago, there wasn't enough wind power coming from the Great Plains to worry about. Now there is, and lots of people are worrying. A group of mostly East Coast utility companies calling itself the Coalition for Fair Transmission Policy fears that the prime conditions in the Great Plains will make the region's wind power too cheap for its members to compete with, unless developers there are made to pay the costs of moving wind power eastward.

A federal historic preservation agency will hold a meeting March 22 at Cape Cod Community College to gather public comments on the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm.

White-nose snydrome has the potential to devastate bats, which also are dying from impacts with wind turbines, Whidden said Feb. 25 during a lecture at Penn State Hazleton. Even before the new threats appeared to the nine species of bats regularly seen in Pennsylvania, one of them, the Indiana bat, was on the federal endangered species list, and that state listed the small-footed bat as threatened.

A group of senators wants to halt stimulus funding for several wind projects regarding concern that the program has subsidized too many jobs overseas. The dispute began after a planned Texas wind farm with substantial Chinese investment announced it would seek a $450 million stimulus tax credit. The developers initially said the project would support 3,000 jobs in China and about 300 in Texas.

The future of Nevada is tied to the future of the sage grouse because the bird lives in a lot of the same areas that are expected to be used for wind, solar and geothermal energy. And although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided not to add the bird to the endangered species list Friday, it acknowledges that federal protection is warranted. The agency basically said it was precluded from adding the bird to the list because species that are more threatened are being given priority.