The EU is heavily reliant on Russian gas, but it has been pushing for the $12-billion Nabucco pipeline since disputes between Russia and transit states like Ukraine highlighted the frailty of its energy supply routes.

China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday said negotiations with Baghdad to exploit an Iraqi oil field continue.

"The situation remains bleak. The toxic combination of high oil prices and falling demand continues to poison the industry's profitability," IATA Director-General and CEO Giovanni Bisignani said in a statement.

The government has issued some 50 exclusive prospecting licenses for more uranium mining firms, but output of uranium is dependent on the availability of water.

It said the Duddon Sands farm, planned near Walney Island off the coast of Barrow-in-Furness, was one of the country's three largest offshore wind farms approved so far. It would comprise up to 139 turbines.

Professor Garnaut has recommended the nation cut emissions by 10 per cent in 12 years' time, in his latest report.

These overlooked, shorter-term pollutants — mostly from burning wood and kerosene and from driving trucks and cars — cause more localized warming than once thought, the authors of the report say. They contend there should be a greater effort to attack this type of pollution for faster results.

The decision last week to reject the moratorium call by Greenpeace means there is no effective mechanism for protecting thousands of orangutans living outside conservation areas, said Novi Hardianto from the Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP).

I have bad news for all those who think that the retirement of George W. Bush will somehow initiate a golden--or green--age in America. It won't. Just take a close look at the promises being made by the two men who have now been formally nominated as their parties' standard bearers in the fight to control the White House.

Oil prices have fallen by a third in the past seven weeks and are headed for a drop below the symbolic $100 threshold for the first time since March. Though not a full-blown collapse, the speed of the decline is prompting some soul-searching within the OPEC oil cartel.

Over the summer a group of five GOP and five Democratic senators, dubbed the Gang of 10, hammered out a comprehensive energy proposal. And now, after taking withering heat from both left and right, the idea is gaining support.

Schwarzenegger in June declared the most populous U.S. state to officially be in drought and declared nine counties in its farm-rich Central Valley to be in a state of emergency because water supplies were so low after two years of below-average rainfall.

Such short-lived pollution includes black carbon (soot), low-altitude ozone, nitrates and sulfates. Each type of pollution influences surface temperatures differently — from the cooling influence of sulfate particles, which tend to reflect sunlight, to the warming characteristics of heat-absorbing black carbon.

The five-door, five-seater compact hatchback -- Honda's second attempt at a dedicated hybrid car after it discontinued production of the two-seater Insight in 2006 -- will also be called Insight.

Dennis Spurgeon told a nuclear energy industry conference in London that the era of cheap oil was over and action was needed to tackle an "energy crisis" facing the United States.