By Michael Burnham

E&E News: Energy investors are eager to open their wallets for “clean” or “green” technologies — solar is hot, biodiesel is big, and cellulosic ethanol is captivating.

But they’re cool about ventures aiming to turn coal into transportation fuels.

It’s not that coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology is immature. Germany and South Africa have been gasifying coal and turning it into low-sulfur diesel and jet fuel for decades. And it has friends on Capitol Hill and in the mining and transportation industries who tout CTL as an elixir for oil addiction and energy insecurity.

By Lucy Kafanov

E&E News: A bill to restore much of California’s San Joaquin River and its threatened run of chinook salmon is headed for its first hard look of the year this week before the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

At issue is an agreement reached late last year by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Friant Water Users Authority and the departments of Interior and Commerce that ended 18 years of litigation between farmers and environmental interests.

The settlement was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in September and requires federal legislation to become fully effective.

By Darren Samuelsohn, Alex Kaplun and Ben Geman

E&E News: A markup this week in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee focuses on biofuel production, energy efficiency, and the capture and underground storage of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, as lawmakers begin in earnest to piece together legislation for the floor.

At the markup, committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) plans to bundle the four separate bills together into one package. Senate Democratic leaders will then use the wide-ranging energy measure as the vehicle for floor consideration before the Memorial Day recess, committee aides said.

You can call it heart-warming. When the whole world is crying hoarse about global warming, Indian corporates are increasingly turning eco-friendly — from planting trees to using energy saving lighting systems to constructing smart eco-friendly buildings and what have you.

Consider this: Thunderstorms, rain and floods at unusual times of the year. Government troops and the LTTE fighting over land in the north and the east that may not even exist in the future.

As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide.

Titled “Echo-Chamber Message” — a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again — the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans “practical help and moral support” and “highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving.”

Mary O’Driscoll

E&E News: The Bush administration’s decision yesterday to promote “national interest” electricity transmission corridors under which federal regulators could permit the construction of power lines prompted a vocal response from Capitol Hill.

If finalized, the designation would implement a controversial provision of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that allows transmission developers to bypass state regulators and make their cases to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The provision is referred to as FERC’s “backstop authority” for allowing construction of additions to ensure the reliability of the U.S. grid.

Dan Berman

E&E News: Global climate change could dramatically reshape America’s public lands and the government’s ability to manage them as seas rise, species are threatened with extinction and wildfire threats increase, Interior Department officials told a House panel yesterday.

“On the ground, we’re seeing a lot of changes,” Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett said. “Some of them dramatic.”

Changing temperatures have spurred the movement of wildlife, forcing managers to rethink how to protect animals and habitat. “Many parks, refuges and other conservation areas were created to preserve a specific mix of species within specific boundaries,” Scarlett said. “Is on-site conservation possible within current, fixed boundaries, if species composition is changing and moving?”

Darren Samuelsohn

E&E News: Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced legislation today that would ban construction of new coal-fired power plants that do not also have the technology to capture and sequester heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

The “Clean Coal Act” would address the approximately 150 proposed electric utilities now on the drawing board across the country.

While more than a dozen of the proposed plants could deploy so-called carbon capture and sequestration, the others would not. The additional CO2 from those plants and scientific warnings about climate change prompted Kerry’s bill.

Lauren Morello

E&E News: The Bush administration opposes a comprehensive oceans reform bill sponsored by members of the bipartisan House Oceans Caucus, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official said yesterday.

“The administration has serious concerns with H.R. 21,” NOAA Assistant Administrator John Dunnigan told members of the House Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans Subcommittee. “Many of the provisions in this bill are inconsistent with the president’s ‘Ocean Action Plan’, are impractical or are inconsistent with existing laws.”