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California’s First District Court of Appeal on Friday ruled that the state Air Resources Board (CARB) can proceed with implementation of a carbon cap-and-trade system. The ruling grants the state regulator a temporary stay on an order, pending the court’s decision, to halt work on the program that was issued by a San Francisco Superior Court judge on May 20.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced on Tuesday that six projects in four states (California, Colorado, Florida, and New York) have been selected to receive nearly $7.5 million over two years to advance next-generation designs for wind turbine drivetrains.

Last Thursday, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that eight projects in five states (California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah) have been selected to receive up to $11.3 million to support the research and development of pioneering geothermal technologies.

U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday unanimously decided that the Clean Air Act (CAA) and other efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas (GHGs)  “displace” any federal common-law right to “seek abatement of carbon dioxide emissions” from fossil fuel–fired power plants—including claims that GHG emissions constitute a “public nuisance.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says in a new report that while all U.S. nuclear plant sites have had some groundwater contamination from radioactive leaks,  there was no discernable impact on the public’s health from radioactive leaks at three nuclear plants it investigated. It concludes, however, that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could better identify and characterize the leaks if it required transparent monitoring data from licensees.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said it would hear an appeal from PPL Montana of a March 2010 Montana Supreme Court decision that would have forced the power company to pay accrued rent and interest worth some $56 million to the state of Montana for the use of riverbeds beneath the company’s hydroelectric plants—some which have been generating power for more than a century.

The EPA on Tuesday extended by 30 days the timeline for public input on the proposed mercury and air toxics standards, though it stressed that the extension would not alter the timeline for issuing the final standards in November 2011. The public comment period for the so-called Toxic Air rule will now end on August 4, 2011.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee today introduced legislation that directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop “achievable standards” for industrial boilers and incinerators and grants more time for the development of and compliance with those rules.

San Antonio’s CPS Energy on Monday announced it would mothball by 2018—15 years earlier than planned—its 871-MW coal-fired J.T. Deely Power Plant—instead of spending an estimated $3 billion on pollution controls to comply with anticipated environmental regulations. The nation’s largest municipal utility expects to replace the plant’s generation through conservation and future renewable sources.

The Department of Energy (DOE) doled out several loan guarantee offers worth a combined $919 million in the past week. Recipients of the conditional commitments include Mesquite Solar 1 for the development of a 150-MW photovoltaic (PV) solar project in Arizona; Calisolar Inc. to help commercialize its silicon solar manufacturing process; 1366 Technologies to develop a multicrystalline wafer-manufacturing project, and Granite Reliable Power for a 99-MW wind project.