Environmental groups are ramping up pressure on the Senate not to take up energy legislation that omits mandatory emissions limits.

The first round of a new fight over White House power to unilaterally impose new protections on large tracts of western lands went to the Obama administration.

The Senate on Thursday rejected, 38-58, Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) bid to block White House authority to designate national monuments in western states.

DeMint wanted to attach the amendment to legislation approved yesterday aimed at bolstering tourism in the U.S.

Two centrist Democrats – Reps. Ike Skelton (Mo.) and Collin Peterson (Minn.) -- on Thursday floated a House version of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) resolution to thwart upcoming EPA climate change rules.

Murkowski quickly emphasized the Democratic support.

“There is bipartisan and bicameral agreement that command-and-control regulations from EPA are not the right way to reduce the emissions blamed for climate change,” she said in a prepared statement Friday morning.

G-20 leaders made waves last year when they jointly pledged to phase out fossil fuel subsidies to help cut greenhouse gas emissions.

But the September meeting in Pittsburgh didn’t produce a detailed plan (that’s supposed to come later), and an International Monetary Fund report Thursday spells out how tough it might be.

The report notes that after declining in the second half of 2008 along with oil prices, petroleum subsidies are now rising alongside them. Total global subsidies are estimated to be $740 billion this year, and over 70 percent are in the G-20, the report finds.

An independent board of scientists will review the United Nations’ embattled Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The board will be part of a broader review of the IPCC to be announced next week, Reuters reports.

The Wall Street Journal delves deeply into what’s plaguing the IPCC here.

Freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) drew GOP attacks when he voted for the controversial House climate change bill that narrowly passed last June.

Perriello – who is vulnerable in this year’s election – defends the vote in a colorful, combative interview with the environmental website Grist.

He has some choice words for the Senate (“If we were going to wait for the Senate to do anything, we would do nothing”) and expresses his disdain for “insider baseball crap.”

The whole thing can be found here.

Senior House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats on Thursday said a major electric utility trade group is “actively misinforming” its members about federal climate change policy and taking a position that many of the members don’t support.

Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) criticized the American Public Power Association (APPA), which represents publicly owned utilities, for supporting a Senate proposal to limit the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

“Numerous APPA members have informed us over the last 24 hours that they do not support APPA’s position,” the two lawmakers wrote in a letter to the trade group. Waxman chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee and Markey heads the Energy and Environment subcommittee.

Climate advocates have increasingly embraced natural gas because it produces far fewer greenhouse gas emissions when burned than coal.

But as this Bloomberg story makes clear, development of one energy source can have consequences for another.

The piece notes that bountiful gas supplies and lower prices are helping Syncrude -- the biggest player in Alberta’s oil sands -- expand its operations.

Earlier this week, we noted that the White House is defending EPA climate rules by alleging that scuttling them would hurt struggling automakers.

Here’s a nice example:

The Department of Transportation is warning that a Senate bid to block planned EPA greenhouse gas regulations would have “profoundly adverse effects” on the economy, the environment, and car companies.

A Feb. 19 letter from a DoT official to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), obtained by The Hill, looks at the repercussions of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) resolution to nullify EPA’s “endangerment finding.”