Ohio offers $2.2M in energy grants
The Ohio Department of Development announced Thursday that $2.2 million is available in new Energy Loan Fund grants. The grants will go to projects that could advance energy technology, including business, industry and residential uses of solar and wind electric, solar thermal systems and other systems. Manufacturing facilities and small businesses also can apply to receive money to implement energy-efficient measures.

Oil and renewables, hand in hand?
A day after an announcement by an oil company that it had successfully extracted oil from a huge deposit more than 5 miles below the Gulf of Mexico, environmental groups renewed calls that the country wean itself from oil as they girded for a setback in their push for energy efficiency. The discovery of the potentially giant oil field, announced Tuesday by Chevron Corp., threatens one of the main efforts of the environmental movement: to persuade legislators and the public to tamp down oil consumption in the face of diminishing supplies, the political problems of imports, the high prices at the pump and concerns about global climate change.