New England governors and Eastern Canadian premiers are expected to focus on a regional approach to energy when they begin their annual meeting Tuesday in Bar Harbor, Maine. With an energy-hungry New England market and the five eastern provinces all looking to export new sources of energy, the premiers say maintaining good cross-border relations is crucial. "We'll be able to talk about the commonalities and that's around energy efficiency, around renewable types of energy," said Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald.

"There are a lot of steps in the legislative process and there is not a whole lot of time left so (Domenici's) skepticism may be well-founded," Democrat Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a subsequent interview Friday. "There are still some issues that are pretty contentious." Bingaman did offer a glimmer of hope for the wind and solar energy industries. He said Congress is working on a separate package to approve tax incentives for both industries that expire in January. "That's one area where we're close to having agreement on what to do," Bingaman said.

[O]ffshore wind power is all blue skies and clear sailing now that Delaware, Texas and Massachusetts have approved projects. New Jersey and Rhode Island are also evaluating offshore wind ventures, while utilities and developers in Georgia, Florida and California are researching technologies and site data. This week focused on two reality checks: A still-evolving regulatory scheme adapted from federal offshore oil and gas drilling overlaps state environmental and economic controls, posing a coordination challenge. ...As important, electric transmission connections and capacity are imperative to move power to utilities inland, and balance supply and demand.

The current production tax credit provides a 10-year, 2.1 cent-per-kilowatt-hour tax write-off. But the report argues a key difficulty facing prospective community wind developers is their lack of a large enough tax liability to take full advantage of the federal tax incentives, which makes it financially difficult to complete projects. Larger wind developers, meanwhile, used the tax break to shatter an industry record in 2007 by installing 5,244 megawatts of wind generation nationwide.

Energy industry sources are heightening their warnings that uncertainty about climate change policy, rising construction costs, and high fuels costs are hampering the construction of new base load electric generation facilities and thereby placing a number of regions at risk of low "capacity margins" that are jeopardizing the reliability of electricity systems. The situation is raising significant questions that Congress will have to address soon to avert potential blackouts in a number of states, according to these sources.

Wind turbines generate electricity very irregularly, because the wind itself is inconsistent. Therefore wind turbines always need backup power from fossil fuels to keep the electricity grid in balance. Gas turbines are the best way to do this. They are able to respond quickly and push power production when wind generators stop suddenly. They can be turned on and off almost instantly, whereas traditional coal-fired plants need to be maintained in a very inefficient standby mode if they are to respond to large fluctuations in power demand. A proliferation of windmills, then, can become a windfall for gas sellers. Just look at the cases of Spain and Germany, Europe's leading producers of wind power.

Visitors to Rehoboth Beach, Del., soon may be greeted by more than sand dunes, seagulls and beach umbrellas. If offshore wind advocates have their way, scores of 140-foot blades will be spinning in the ocean breeze nearly a dozen miles away, barely visible to the sunbathers. Offshore wind has taken a back seat to offshore drilling for oil and natural gas in the current energy debate.

Sierra Club Atlantic has asked the Energy Board of Canada for proof that green energy generated in Nova Scotia is used in the province, and not exported to the United States. Their six page submission makes several references to the Digby Neck wind farm and statements made by Barry Zwicker, developer of the project. ...Mark Dittrick, the club's conservation chair, says the New England states are eager to purchase green energy, and right now Nova Scotians have no assurance wind power and tidal power won't be exported from the province.

The closely watched Midwest ISO (MISO) queue reform proposals recently approved by FERC are expected to move wind energy generation projects through the interconnection process faster, but the queuing reforms are also underscoring the need for further regional-level policies to boost transmission infrastructure development. ...To tighten the criteria for projects to enter the queue and move forward, MISO proposed to replace its "first come, first served" process with a "first ready, first served" process that relies on projects meeting "milestones" before they can advance.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is showing new interest in a Republican-backed drilling bill, crafted by a bipartisan group, that supports both renewable energy and increased offshore oil and gas production, but does not include last year's contentious tax roll-back package opposed by Big Oil, House sources tell EnergyWashington. Though these sources would not go so far as to predict Pelosi will drop her tax plans for Big Oil, they say Pelosi's interest in the bipartisan group's bill indicates a significant position change from a month ago, when sources close to the Speaker indicated she did not take the effort seriously and was not looking to give it floor time.

The Interior Department, the agency that handles oil-and-gas leases in U.S. waters, is preparing to lease swaths of the outer continental shelf to companies that want to erect massive wind turbines. With the public-comment period for the proposal scheduled to end Monday, competition is heating up to develop wind projects on the shelf ...But the onshore wind industry in the U.S. is beginning to be hampered by a lack of electrical-grid capacity to carry the power from the isolated places where wind typically blows hardest to the population centers that need the juice. Offshore wind provides a potentially big source of energy close to major coastal cities.

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing. That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, ...are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

Experts from across the country converged on Las Vegas armed with a variety of plans, so Reid instead left with dozens of ideas, ranging from world-altering to underwhelming. The Sun asked the utility industry, environmental experts and the politically savvy to weigh in and tell us which ones are probable, which ones are possible and which ones are likely to end up on the cutting room floor, no matter how brilliant they might be. ...

New Brunswick is a rural province, and has low population densities. "So it's possible to locate wind generating facilities without intruding on residential areas," Howe said. "That's a key advantage over New England in terms of being able to locate a wind generator without having concerns on the part of resident who don't want a wind generator in their backyard."

A crucial argument about the best way to combat global warming comes down to two alternatives that may seem deceptively simple: • Force utilities to make a certain percentage of electricity from renewable resources, such as solar and wind. • Make utilities pay a stiff fine for the greenhouse gases they produce from coal and natural gas, then let the utilities figure out the most economical way of reducing their emissions. ...The debate boils down to three key points: Are renewable standards the best way to deal with greenhouse gases? How expensive are renewables, particularly in the Southeast? And what's the best renewable for Florida?

After two months of fever-pitch debate over how to deal with the soaring price of oil, Congress left town Friday without doing anything on energy. The final day featured a group of raucus Republicans who remained on the House floor after an adjournment vote was passed, the microphones turned off and the lights dimmed, demanding that Democratic leaders return and take action on comprehensive energy legislation.

U.S. legislation extending renewable energy and energy-efficiency tax credits failed a key procedural vote on Wednesday and lawmakers will now set the bill aside, at least temporarily. The extensive tax package includes measures providing an eight-year extension of solar energy investment credits, and a one-year extension of tax credits for biodiesel, renewable diesel, and wind power. The bill required 60 "yes" votes in the 100-member Senate to move forward, but received only 51, with 43 opposed.

But wind power is also what experts call a "location-constrained resource," meaning that it can't be transported like coal or oil and is thus dependent on a network of lines and towers to reach a market often hundreds of miles away. It is thus burdened by a "chicken-and-egg problem" - wind farms don't want to locate in a site without transmission lines, and utilities don't want to erect lines where there are no wind farms.

A University of Maine researcher told members of Congress on Tuesday that offshore wind power offers enormous potential for helping wean the U.S. off its fossil fuel dependence and that Maine is ready to lead the charge in developing the technology. ...These turbines would be located about 20 miles out to sea, making them invisible from land and therefore less likely to encounter opposition from coastal landowners, Dagher said. And unlike the Pickens plan, which focuses on wind power development in the Midwest, offshore wind energy could be located closer to the nation's primary population centers.

Financial industry executives are mustering on Capitol Hill to head off a congressional effort to rewrite the rules for the nation's energy markets, saying it could unsettle already nervous markets and push more energy trading abroad, beyond the reach of domestic regulators. The primary focus of Wall Street's concern is a bill entitled the Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008, introduced on Tuesday by a group of Democratic senators led by Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. The bill would substantially broaden U.S. regulators' authority ...Since the bill's introduction, lobbyists for the futures industry and other institutional interests in the energy markets have significantly bolstered their efforts in Washington.