How would you feel about a wind turbine in your community? What do you know about biomass or biodiesel? The Franklin Regional Council of Governments wants to know.

There's more to determining the value of wind power than knowing which way the wind blows -- or even how hard. MIT researchers studying winds off the Northeast coast have found that estimating the potential environmental benefits from wind and other renewables requires a detailed understanding of the dynamics of both renewable resources and conventional power generation. Data show that wind-energy facilities would generate far more electricity in winter, because that's when winds are strongest. But the need for electricity is greatest in summer, when air conditioners are going full blast.

After briefly wavering, Governor M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut yesterday agreed to sign onto a multistate greenhouse gas pact that Massachusetts and Rhode Island rejected Wednesday.

Massachusetts yesterday pulled out of a landmark multistate pact to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from Northeast power plants, Governor Mitt Romney confirmed last night. Rhode Island also dropped out of the pact, according to two government officials involved in the negotiations.

Which comes first, a set of guidelines or a specific review? That's the latest question being asked in the saga of a proposed wind farm on Nantucket Sound.

The head of New England's biggest natural gas utility promised yesterday that homes and businesses across the region will face no shortage of gas for heating this winter.

A Science Unit report on the controversy over a proposed wind farm to be built off the coast of Massachusetts in the middle of Nantucket Sound.

Many Berkshire towns have earned thousands of dollars for a public renewable energy project through the Massachusetts Clean Energy ChoiceSM program. The Clean Energy Choice program has $1.25 million to distribute in matching funds to towns when residents and small businesses choose to “green up” their electricity.

A group of Northeast states has postponed the announcement of a landmark agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants after Governor Mitt Romney raised objections to the pact late last week, two government sources familiar with the agreement said yesterday.

Researchers seeking to make the ocean's salty brine drinkable using wind power will spend the next year using the town of Hull as a case study to help other water-needy, windswept coastal areas filter freshwater from the sea.

With one wind turbine already spinning, another to be installed in January, and a third offshore turbine being considered, Hull is an ideal laboratory for modeling a desalination plant that runs off a combination of renewable energy and the electric grid, according to James Manwell, director of the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

GARDNER [MA] -- Mount Wachusett Community College is poised to receive $1 million in federal money to conduct tests on whether wind could be used to generate energy for local residents.

Amherst - The federal government has awarded $100,000 to the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts to explore a partially wind-powered desalination plant that could turn seawater into fresh drinking water.