U.S. President Barack Obama, whose administration has made clean energy a top priority, told reporters the bill "ushers in a critical transition to a clean energy economy..." But opponents say it will amount to a heavy tax on industry that will put people out of work. Over time, the cap becomes more stringent to reduce carbon emissions, causing the cost of permits to surge and forcing factories to relocate to Asia, critics said.

To get power from wind turbines to customers in the cities will require thousands of miles of new transmission lines. Wind is the easy part. Building the lines is tougher. Bill Bishop explains.

Suzlon lost sales last year after some blades supplied by the company cracked and customers in the U.S. canceled orders. The replacements for customers will be completed in mid-August, two months behind schedule, the company said today.

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."

Federal officials are again delaying whether to list sage grouse in 11 Western states as threatened or endangered -- leaving in limbo until at least 2010 a spate of industries that could face sweeping restrictions if the bird is protected. The chicken-sized grouse ranges from Montana to California alongside livestock grazing, oil and gas drilling and an increasing number of wind power turbines.

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.

Efforts should be focused on stopping output of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas which helps heat the planet, rather than moving to a source that can be regenerated, said Craig Mundie, the man who replaced Bill Gates as the world's largest software maker's futurist. Conservation and radical technologies, including new nuclear, could be key, he said.

A transmission company that wants to take North Dakota's wind energy to Eastern markets says its plan hinges on a federal change in how transmission facilities are paid for. Representatives of ITC Holdings in Novi, Mich., joined officials with Denali Energy, a company involved in the proposed Hartland Wind Farm northwest of Minot, at a meeting in Minot with landowners Wednesday.

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.

They've included hazards to boaters, hazards to endangered migratory birds, hazards to aircraft flying between the Vineyard and the mainland, and of course, hazards to the property value of big-buck homes with scenic views of Nantucket Sound. Oh yes, one can't forget the installation of transmission lines to link the turbines to the utility grid. And that's just for one relatively small wind farm.

The U.S. Department of Energy expects to soon set out rules for $6 billion in loan guarantees included in the stimulus package to fund renewable energy projects and is working to set up a small business program, a DOE official said on Tuesday. ...The $6 billion in loan guarantees is in addition to $42.5 billion in loan guarantees that have been authorized under energy legislation passed in 2005, but which have not yet been finalized.

The cost of building new power plants fell 3% over the past six months, marking the first time in nearly a decade that the costs of non-nuclear plants have decreased, according to the IHS CERA Power Capital Costs Index.

Wind has become the nation's most viable renewable energy option, and industry experts see plenty of potential in Wisconsin as policymakers demand that a larger percentage of energy come from wind, the sun and other clean-energy sources. ...a major question remains: how to move electricity from the wind-swept prairies where it's generated to the big cities where it's needed.

New York Regional Interconnect Inc. is seeking help from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to revive plans for a large electrical transmission line from Marcy in Oneida County to New Windsor in Orange County. In two years of meetings and hearings, the proposed line was condemned by most local residents, officials and activists, who deemed it unnecessary, too expensive, and a threat to health and property values.

A growing number of advocates, among them Governor Corzine and President Obama, believe that energy efficiency and renewable energy could not only help the environment but replace jobs lost in the recession. Critics, however, say that's an expensive and unproven way to create jobs that will destroy jobs in other sectors, and in many cases will be little more than putting a green veneer on existing trades. "If you spend a billion dollars, sure you will create jobs," said William T. Bogart, an economic professor and dean of York College of Pennsylvania. "The question is, on net, how many?

Millions of birds funnel through the Texas coast before they head north along the Central Flyway, one of the great bird migration routes between South America and the Arctic. This was the first year that wind farms were operating there during the spring migration. One study near the coastal wind farms in Kenedy County, near the Laguna Madre, found that at the peak of fall migration in 2007, 4,000 birds an hour passed in a 1-kilometer-wide band.

On a vacant piece of land near Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the promise of solar energy has collided into the demands of military training. And a solar project that would have featured a vast field of mirrors, a molten-salt storage facility and a 600-foot "power tower" appears to be heading for defeat.