ConocoPhillips is leaving the partnership that’s pushing Congress to approve cap-and-trade legislation.

Some environmental groups are bashing White House plans to spur construction of the first new U.S. nuclear power plants in decades.

President Obama is expected to announce Tuesday that Southern Company will receive over $8 billion in federal loan guarantees to help finance two new nuclear reactors in Georgia.

Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen issued a statement Monday alleging the financing “will once again put taxpayers on the hook when they can least afford it” an that “it takes us entirely in the wrong direction.”

The report, commissioned by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, should provide some ammo for industry groups.

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She struck back at climate skeptics who claim that record snowstorms this winter have undercut evidence of global warming.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank ends Sunday’s column on snowstorms and climate change with these observations about the PR battle over global warming:

For those concerned about warming, it's time for a shift in emphasis. Fortunately, one has already been provided to them by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has done more than any Democrat to keep climate legislation alive this year. His solution: skip the hurricanes and Himalayan glaciers and keep the argument on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on foreign oil, some of that going to terrorists rather than to domestic job creation.

Al Gore, for one, seems to realize it's time for a new tactic. New TV ads released during last week's blizzards by Gore's climate advocacy group say nothing about climate science. They show workers asking their senators for more jobs from clean energy. Read more...

President Obama will next week announce a federal loan guarantee for utility giant Southern Company to build two new nuclear reactors.

Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Energy Department, is also a budding TV star.

Chu will take his energy efficiency message to ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” on Sunday.

From DoE this afternoon:

It's official: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said today that it plans to sue to block EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Steven J. Law, chief legal officer and general counsel of the Chamber, said in a statement that its court challenge will focus “specifically on the inadequacies of the process that EPA followed in triggering Clean Air Act regulation, and not on scientific issues related to climate change or endangerment.”

But the Chamber is also claiming that EPA failed to do a "careful analysis of all available date and options."

“Further details about our challenge will be forthcoming in the coming weeks when our statement of issues is filed,” Law said in a statement.

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Industry groups allege the Interior Department's two-year environvmental study timeline of oil-and-gas resources is too slow.