But after spending millions on television commercials and a public relations tour that took him to 74 cities and 22 town halls, his plan has run into some sizable hurdles, most notably a crash in energy prices. As prices plunged, the Texas billionaire's hedge funds lost billions of dollars. Pickens also scrapped plans for the world's biggest wind farm, and California voters rejected a natural gas initiative he backed. "I do wonder how long that I can continue at the pace," Pickens, 81, said Tuesday.

If the union's internal count is correct, its thousands of phone calls to union members in eight undecided congressional districts may have tipped the 219-212 vote. The USW's national political director, Chuck Rocha, said at least four members were swayed by calls - two in New Jersey, and one each in Ohio and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania Democrat Jason Altmire was targeted but voted no.

In addition to raising energy prices, the climate legislation that's winding through Congress would create a parallel financial system with a carbon-based currency. ...Everyone from small farmers to nuclear energy companies would be forced to re-evaluate their place in the new order.

The Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed sweeping legislation Friday that calls for the nation's first limits on pollution linked to global warming and aims to usher in a new era of cleaner, yet more costly, energy. The vote was 219-212, capping months of negotiations and days of intense bargaining among Democrats. Republicans were overwhelmingly against the measure, arguing it would destroy jobs in the midst of a recession while burdening consumers with a new tax in the form of higher energy costs.

For the first time ever, the House on Friday passed a plan to combat climate change, a top priority of President Obama's that Rep. Brian Higgins said could rescue the Western New York economy. The bill's opponents, however, were vehement in their contention that the bill could break the bank of the nation's consumers. ...The bill now moves on to the Senate, where its prospects are murky.

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages. ...The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

The House could vote today on a measure to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, with Democratic leaders predicting a tight victory for a behemoth bill that has grown more complex with each compromise. The heart of the bill, which now runs to 1,201 pages, is a plan to reduce emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. ...But the bill also contains a system of caveats, safety valves and rule changes meant to satisfy unhappy Democrats.

Building transmission lines would cost as much as $4 billion a year, and managing its variability would add further to its price, the Pew Center said in a report today. Prices would still be competitive with other energy sources if the U.S. approves legislation to limit greenhouse gases, the group said.

The mining industry must fight the federal climate legislation Congress is now considering and seek investment in carbon capture technology, National Mining Association President Hal Quinn said Thursday. Quinn addressed the Wyoming Mining Association convention in Laramie.

A U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday approved a comprehensive energy package that would require utilities to generate 15 percent of electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind power by 2021. Utilities could meet about a quarter of their renewable requirements through energy efficiency gains.

The United States will not be able to meet the national renewable power mandates currently being considered in Congress, the chief executive of power company PPL Corp said on Tuesday. "We have to be realistic about understanding the pure and simple realities of various states across the country and what level of renewables will be able to come to market," PPL chief executive officer James Miller said at a press briefing. ...He warned that if the renewable mandates were too aggressive consumers would pay the price.

On one map they look like bubbles. On another they're more like hot dogs. These shaded circles and oblongs in Nevada and across the West could one day be clusters of solar power plants, wind farms or geothermal energy projects. The growing number of maps drawn by groups hoping to guide the expected explosion in renewable energy show there is no firm agreement on where such projects will be concentrated.

For decades, most of the nation's renewable power has come from dams, which supplied cheap electricity without requiring fossil fuels. But the federal agencies running the dams often compiled woeful track records on other environmental issues. ...Yet the shift of emphasis at the dam agencies is proving far from simple. It could end up pitting one environmental goal against another.

Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency, says it is "inevitable" that the manufacturing of renewable energy components - mainly solar modules and wind turbines - will move to China and, to a lesser extent, India. "The PV cells made there are not of as high a quality yet [as those made in Europe] but they will get there." This view is echoed by George Frampton, former chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and a member of the Obama campaign's transition team. He says: "There is a very strong momentum. And it's not just because of the cost, it's also that I'm not that optimistic that this market is going to boom in the US."

The Obama administration has proposed a 25 percent cut in the research and development budget for one of the most promising renewable energy sources in the Northwest - wave and tidal power. ...Most of the attention so far has focused on developing large wind farms east of the Cascade Mountains. But because wind blows intermittently, the region also needs a more reliable source of alternative energy; tidal and wave fit that need. Also, at least with tidal, the generators would be closer to population centers than the wind turbines in eastern Washington.

Despite the speed with which the government wants to act - the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- includes a goal of spending 50% of the $787 billion allocated by the legislation within 120 days from when it is signed into law -- many hurdles and unanswered questions remain ...while one provision of the Recovery Act gives cash grants, another takes away tax benefits. The act stipulates that recipients of cash grants can only use 85% of the accelerated depreciation associated with a project.

The signers represented virtually every type of clean energy - wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, combined heat and power, and biomass - and reflected the industry's concern that a loan guarantee program for clean energy projects approved in the stimulus package was stuck in the federal bureaucracy, as has been a similar loan program that predates the stimulus. The letter, seen by Green Inc, cited "disagreements" between the Department of Energy and the Office of Management and Budget.

"Significantly lower renewable targets" unveiled this week as part of a House climate-change bill "will severely blunt the signal" for billions of dollars in investment to expand production in the U.S., the executives said in a May 14 letter to Congress that was released today.

An Environmental Protection Agency proposal that could lead to regulating the gases blamed for global warming will prove costly for factories, small businesses and other institutions, according to a White House document. The nine-page memo is a compilation of opinions made by a dozen federal agencies and departments during an internal review before the EPA issued a finding in April that greenhouse gases pose dangers to public health and welfare.