A study released on the eve of a national conference on green jobs says that emerging eco-friendly work must provide adequate pay and benefits -- or risk damaging efforts to restore the economy and strive for environmental sustainability. The study released yesterday, "High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Green Economy." ..."One of the greatest risks is that, in our haste to create a large quantity of new green jobs, we pay too little attention to their quality," researchers said.

Wind and solar power have been growing at a blistering pace in recent years, and that growth seemed likely to accelerate under the green-minded Obama administration. But because of the credit crisis and the broader economic downturn, the opposite is happening: installation of wind and solar power is plummeting.

Last summer, wind turbine manufacturers couldn't make parts fast enough to meet demand. Now, industry executives say, financing has all but disappeared because of the economy, causing some planned projects to be put on hold. Unless there's a robust economic rebound, or the government steps in, they say, construction of wind turbines nationwide will be set back, and the companies that make turbine parts could be forced to cut jobs.

The presence of prairie winds and rich soil makes Iowa literally fertile ground for developing alternative energy sources from wind turbines and biofuels. But the landscape is also a reminder that achieving energy independence is a formidable challenge and making an agricultural economy green is not easy. ...Phil Wyse, a state representative for 22 years, believes Iowa and America need nuclear power. "We need sources of power that are constant and don't rely on things like whether the wind's blowing or the sun's shining," he says.

In 2000-plus pages, filled with studies, statistics and opinions galore, the federal Minerals Management Service concluded that building a wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal was not only better than nowhere, but better than a good many other spots. The Final Environmental Impact Statement released last week didn't say the site in Nantucket Sound was perfect, but that it met a series of physical, biological and social/human benchmarks.

America's first offshore wind farm has moved closer to the construction stage now that the federal government has released a favorable Final Environmental Impact Statement on the project. ...The Alliance is critical of the federal agency saying, "Denying the public an opportunity to review Cape Wind in the context of the pending regulations, MMS has failed to complete OCS rules and has therefore violated section 388 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which required that regulations be finalized by May 2006."

A benchmark in the country's efforts to expand clean energy was reached today as the nation's first proposed offshore wind farm -- proposed in Nantucket Sound -- received a favorable final environmental review from a key federal agency. Calling his agency's report " a milestone," Minerals Management Service Director Randall Luithi said in a telephone interview this morning that Cape Wind could become "a bellweather for many offshore wind projects to come."

President-elect Barack Obama will spend part of today touring a factory near Cleveland that makes parts for wind turbines - an example of the "green jobs" that he hopes to promote in the stimulus package. But some of those jobs in the wind industry are becoming casualties of the economic slump. North Dakota-based D.M.I. Industries, which manufactures turbine towers, is laying off 20 percent of its workers across three plants - in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Stevensville, Ontario and West Fargo, North Dakota.

The Minerals Management Service has issued their Final Environmental Impact Statement as of 1 p.m. Friday. They submitted it to the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday Jan. 9. According to MMS "impacts are expected to be negligible or minor; some moderate impacts were found."

The inspector general for the U.S. Department of the Interior is investigating how the Minerals Management Service has handled its review of the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm. The investigation comes as the federal agency is about to release its final environmental report on the energy project, which sources say could be within days. ...Rumors about the investigation have been floating for months among proponents and opponents of Cape Wind.

Scientists Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of the University of Maryland have told Discover News that they have conducted experiments on the affects the 300 foot turbines would have on the wind. Considering the conservation of energy, moving the turbines (to create electricity) would result in a drop of wind speed by about 5-7 mph. More importantly, the resulting winds would ripple through the atmosphere downstream and impact weather systems in a way not fully understood yet. Rather than get into the physics of what could happen in may different scenarios, wind sheer of any sort in the central plains is not a good thing. Think tornadoes!

Computer giant Dell Inc. said this summer that it has become "carbon neutral," the latest step in its quest to be "the greenest technology company on the planet." What that means, and what it doesn't, may surprise Dell customers and other consumers who have been bombarded with bold environmental promises from major corporations. ...The amount of emissions Dell has committed to neutralize is known in the environmental industry as the company's "carbon footprint." But there is no universally accepted standard for what a footprint should include, and so every company calculates its differently.

This time of year, wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks and solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. ...As concern has grown about global warming, many utilities and homeowners have been trying to shrink their emissions of carbon dioxide - their carbon footprints - by installing solar panels, wind turbines and even generators powered by tides or rivers. But for the moment, at least, the planet is still cold enough to deal nasty winter blows to some of this green machinery.

The financial crisis is causing problems for First Wind, one of the backers of Deepwater Wind, the firm chosen by Gov. Donald L. Carcieri to build Rhode Island's offshore wind farm. ...First Wind declined to comment, but in its public filing the company warned: "If we are unable to obtain additional debt or equity financing, we may have to curtail our development activities or be forced to sell assets."

To make use of this clean [renewable] energy, we'll need more transmission lines that can transport power from one region to another and connect energy-­hungry cities with the remote areas where much of our renewable power is likely to be generated. We'll also need far smarter controls throughout the distribution system--technologies that can store extra electricity from wind farms in the batteries of plug-in hybrid cars, for example, or remotely turn power-hungry appliances on and off as the energy supply rises and falls. If these grid upgrades don't happen, new renewable-power projects could be stalled, because they would place unacceptable stresses on existing electrical systems.

Doyle is paid just over $35,000 a month for the seven wind turbines in his soybean and corn fields. Those turbines and thousands others across the Midwest the past few years were part of an unprecedented build-out for the wind-power industry. That expansion is now drastically slowing as financing dries up ...Companies that bankrolled much of the boom -- the insurer AIG, now-bankrupt financial service company Lehman Brothers and Wachovia Corp. -- are among the meltdown's biggest losers.

Waters off the Northeast coast are called by some the Saudi Arabia of wind for their potential in providing massive amounts of energy to the region. Yet even talk of placing huge turbines in shallow waters off scenic shores can raise an enormous public outcry. Behind the scenes in the U.S. and in Europe, the race is on to build the world's first deep-water wind farms ..."I think it's important when we think about this that we keep in mind this is a long-term perspective," Johannessen said. "We're talking about 10 years-plus, or 20 years maybe, before the technology is available on commercial terms."

"The development of renewable energy resources will require a significant expansion of the grid, as well as a significant increase in needed operating reserves given the intermittent nature of wind and other resources." PJM has 90,000 megawatts of new generation waiting for approval to feed into the grid, with nearly half that power coming from wind.

The political winds are right for making wind power in Iowa. The problem is getting that power to the big cities that can use it. ...Proposals to give FERC more say over power transmission lines have foundered in Congress before, and the commission itself isn't united behind Kelliher's idea. Under current law, the commission can promote investment in new transmission lines for wind farms by awarding developers a higher rate of return. That allows utilities to charge more for the power. But it's still up to the states to decide whether to allow the lines to be built.

Behind the scenes in the U.S. and in Europe, the race is on to build the world's first deep-water wind farms, ones that would operate on floating platforms in waters hundreds of feet deep, like oil rigs found in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. There are gargantuan technical hurdles ...