Energy & Fuel

"The U.S. drilling frenzy is over. What’s not is the boom in oil production."

Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of the Southern Company, is building a so-called "clean coal" plant in Mississippi. The cost has ballooned from the original estimate of $1.8 billion to the current $6.17 billion (and counting). As the residents of rural Kemper County can tell you, that is just the beginning. It will strip mine lignite from 48 square miles of timber and pasture land.

An ecological treasure, a forest maintained by the Kernan Family in upstate New York for seven decades, is now "threatened by the construction of the Constitution Pipeline, a $700 million, 124-mile conduit designed to transport natural gas from the Marcellus Shale fields of northeast Pennsylvania" to pipelines serving markets in New York and New England.

"A revised environmental review of a contested Arctic oil lease makes drilling in the area far more likely, a development that has infuriated environmentalists."

"Apple Inc's deal to buy nearly $1 billion of power from a massive First Solar Inc plant could be the first of a stampede of contracts driven by the looming change in a solar tax incentive that makes such projects particularly attractive."

"Total, the Paris-based oil giant, on Thursday reported a loss of $5.7 billion for the fourth quarter of 2014 as it struggles with the deep slump in oil prices."

"The House on Wednesday passed a bill approving construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, setting up a confrontation with President Obama, who has vowed to veto the measure."

"Apple has committed nearly $850 million to help build a solar energy farm in Monterey County that will generate power for its California facilities, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced Tuesday."