Bill McMorris of Illinois Statehouse News reports that the Dept. of Energy is experiencing a communications breakdown with two rural Illinois towns about plans for "FutureGen 2.0," a less ambitious version of DOE's plan for a commercial scale "clean coal" power plant.  Basically, DOE pencilled the towns in for big projects without telling them beforehand.

The first of nine proposed major solar energy plants easily won the approval of California regulators Wednesday, reports David Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle -- as firms battle technical hurdles and race against the clock.

Paul Merrion of Crain's Chicago Business reports that Illinois will receive $121 million more in Dept. of Energy stimulus money to weatherize homes. Illinois had already received $121 million to weatherize 27,000 households -- the second federal payment was contingent on the state completing work on 30 percent of homes scheduled for renovation. Weatherization can mean insulating homes, paying for energy audits, or installing heating and cooling systems. It appears Illinois has turned around its weatherization program after an exceedingly rough start.

As Ned Hodgman has tirelessly chronicled, the Dept. of Energy has problems distributing its share of the stimulus bill in a timely fashion. This is partly because many of the projects eligible for funding are unprecedented -- like a plan in Illinois for three suburban school districts to construct and operate a wind farm. The Chicago Tribune's Robert Channick reports that these school districts, which serve about 25,000 students, have formed The School Wind Consortium and are expected to receive $15 million in DOE grants.

The Dept. of Energy still can't seem to get stimulus money out the door (we've written about this problem here and here).  But the Washington Post's editorial board misses an opportunity in their look at the slow release of stimulus grants at DOE.

Maryland homeowners who want federal help to add energy-efficiency improvements are going to have to wait for a while, as Cody Calamaio reports in the Montgomery County, MD Gazette.  The same holds true for would-be green home repair projects around the country.

Another obstacle for removing several century-old dams on the Klamath River, a waterway once teeming with now endangered salmon, has been removed by a second federal study, the Associated Press reports. As a result, the U.S. Department of Interior announced it will conduct a third examination of the sediment that has built up behind the dams to determine the consequences of dam removal. The main concern is that mercury and other toxic compounds left over from historic gold mining, plywood manufacturing, and farming would contaminate areas downstream.

FutureGen -- the Obama and Bush Energy Dept. plan to build a “clean coal” power plant in rural Mattoon, Illinois – effectively died last week. Turns out its replacement project is also going nowhere, reports The Southern of Carbondale, Illinois (via Progress Illinois).

It could be a breakthrough for electricity generation, or an innovation Americans will come to regret. Funded in part by stimulus and other federal funds, a planned California power plant would convert coal and petroleum coke into hydrogen which would then be burned for electricity. According to Will Evans of CaliforniaWatch, the key feature of the new plant, to be built and run by BP and a joint venture partner with strong BP roots, is “carbon sequestration,” the modern day alchemist’s holy grail that will

The long discussed plan to build "FutureGen," -- a "clean coal" power plant outside of Mattoon, Illinois -- is dead. According to Katherine Skiba of the Chicago Tribune. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin says that FutureGen (the name refers to the alliance of energy companies that were supposed to build the plant) will still get $1 billion in Dept. of Energy stimulus money. However, the money will go