U.S Fish and Wildlife Service Director Sam Hamilton, 54, died Saturday in Colorado after experiencing chest pains.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Saturday that major Capitol Hill renewable electricity proposals would not prompt additional generation from sources like wind and solar power beyond the increases expected under existing programs.

A “renewable electricity standard” (RES) that forces many utilities to supply escalating amounts of their power from renewable sources over time has long been a pillar of Democratic energy and climate bills, but has not become law.

Chu – appearing the National Governors Association meeting in Washington, DC – said that renewables are already on a path to eventually supply 15-17 percent of the nation’s power on the strength of funding in the big 2009 stimulus law.

President Obama on Friday used an appearance in Nevada to address climate change and all the snow this year. He spoke at a town hall meeting while campaigning for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Here’s what Obama said during a lengthy response to a question about energy and climate policy:

First of all, we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody is like -- a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, see, look at that, there's all this snow on the ground, this doesn't mean anything.  I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn't mean that every place is getting warmer; it means the planet as a whole is getting warmer.  But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees, and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow. Read more...

Eight Senate Democrats jointly said Friday that they fear the economic effects of planned EPA global warming rules.

The Interior Department is forming a new “consortium” with Atlantic Coast states to help spur development of offshore wind power projects, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Friday.

Salazar, appearing with a group of the governors, also said he has instructed Interior officials to examine ways to streamline the permitting of projects in federal waters.

Salazar announced the plan after meeting at Interior headquarters with the governors of Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland. The Massachusetts governor joined the meeting by phone.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters Friday afternoon that he’s 30-45 days away from a closely-watched decision about the Obama administration’s policy on offshore oil-and-gas drilling.

Salazar inherited a Bush-era draft plan that would allow greatly expanded drilling in federal waters – including development of wide Atlantic and Pacific coast areas that had been off-limits until decades-old bans expired in October of 2008.

Don’t expect the Obama administration to adopt the Bush-era plan whole cloth.

But the degree of expanded leasing that Interior might propose remains uncertain. President Obama signaled in his State of the Union speech that he’s open to wider leasing, calling for “tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.”

The White House hopes to translate its support for new drilling and nuclear power into a bipartisan deal on a broader energy and climate change package.

Salazar was asked about oil-and-gas drilling Friday at an appearance with Atlantic Coast governors to tout their joint efforts to develop coastal wind projects. He declined to provide any details about the upcoming drilling announcement, saying only “we are working on it very hard.”

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) is trying to rally support among his fellow governors for an effort in Congress to prevent EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.

A draft letter, which Barbour is circulating in advance of a National Governors Association meeting this weekend, says EPA’s regulatory push would place “heavy administrative burdens on state environmental quality agencies.”

The letter urges members of Congress to support Sen. Lisa Murkowski's efforts (R-Alaska) to use the Congressional Review Act to block EPA from regulating carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases.

Environmental groups in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership are confirming that a split over how to divvy up valuable pollution permits under climate legislation is a big reason why oil giants BP and ConocoPhillips are walking away from the industry-green partnership.

Oil refiners have long claimed that the big House–approved climate bill and a major Senate proposal would provide them far too few free emissions allowances, especially compared to the bounty for electric utilities and other industries.

The two oil companies that announced their exit this week had pressed USCAP – which has been an influential voice on Capitol Hill – to get behind a system friendlier to refiners, but apparently to no avail.

The administration’s conditional approval of a loan guarantee to back construction of two new reactors has the nuclear energy industry beaming.

“We have nothing less than a new political mandate for nuclear energy,” Marvin Fertel, the president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, told an audience of Wall Street analysts in New York on Friday.

“The phrase ‘strong political support’ understates our position. 2009 was a transformational year for nuclear energy in Washington,” Fertel said. He also noted President Obama’s State of the Union address that called for the construction of new nuclear plants as part of a clean energy future.

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