COAL: How a group of women from a Chicago suburb got their concerns about health impacts from neighboring coal plants heard at the Rio+20 climate summmit. (Midwest Energy News)
CLIMATE: House Democrats call for congressional hearings on the role of climate change in this year’s wildfires; and George Shultz, who was President Reagan’s secretary of state, joins a growing number of prominent conservatives backing a carbon tax. (The Hill, ClimateWire)
FRACKING: Ohio Gov. John Kasich renews his call for increased taxes on drilling, and insurers say they won’t pay claims to property owners for damage caused by oil and gas drilling. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch)
ALSO: A chart from the Department of Energy shows America’s dramatic shift from coal to natural gas. (The Atlantic)
PIPELINES: If you want to read a copy of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s industry-developed safety standards, it will cost you nearly $1,000; and Nebraska’s tax share from the first Keystone pipeline turns out to be less than half of what TransCanada initially projected; Enbridge finds an unlikely partner in a Michigan conservation group; and the EPA investigates new traces of oil in the Kalamazoo River. (Greenwire, Omaha World-Herald, Detroit Free Press, Kalamazoo Gazette)
BAKKEN: “I can’t believe they put an oil rig in the backyard”: Oil companies begin drilling in a Williston, North Dakota neighborhood; and flaring from the Oil Patch has made the U.S. the world leader in wasting natural gas. (Fargo Forum, Christian Science Monitor)
SOLAR: Retailers, led by Ikea, are becoming big players in on-site renewable energy. (ClimateWire)
WASTE-TO-ENERGY: Marion, Iowa, considers forming a municipal utility that would provide all of the city’s electricity from a waste-to-energy plant. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
ETHANOL: South Dakota will provide $960,000 in grants to help gas stations install ethanol blender pumps. (Sioux Falls Argus Leader)
EFFICIENCY: A Minnesota company develops a refrigeration system for trucks that eliminates the need for a second engine, boosting fuel economy by up to 50 percent. (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
COMMENTARY: Tina Casey wonders where all the outrage is as another light bulb deadline looms, the Bloomington Pantagraph calls a proposed Chicago coal-to-gas plant a “gamble” that taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for, and Jon Tevlin finds “covert deals, phantom jobs and hedge-fund cash machines” amid the Minnesota and Wisconsin frac sand boom. (CleanTechnica, Bloomington Pantagraph, Minneapolis Star Tribune)