Talking fridges hate global warming - pass it on YOUR refrigerator could soon be helping to cool the planet as well as your food. A bar fridge built by the CSIRO has the ability to communicate with other refrigerators. The appliances do not gossip about what kind of milk you have bought, but exchange data that could help balance energy usage across the day and, ultimately, reduce the need for power stations, said a CSIRO research scientist, Geoff James.

NSW power play stirs up a giant of global warming SOONER or later, some anti-privatisation activist will start doing background checks on China Huaneng Group, which is at the front of the queue to bid for $15 billion in NSW power assets. They'll see that Sydney might soon be powered by the world's biggest corporate contributor to global warming.

VICTORIA'S brown coal industry will benefit from a multimillion-dollar investment flowing into clean-coal technology company Exergen. Indian multinational company Tata Power and Australian engineering services company Sedgman yesterday announced their investment at Beaconsfield, Tasmania, the site of Exergen's pilot plant. They join foundation investor Thiess. The size and conditions of the investment are being kept confidential, but the money will help fund a $20 million engineering study to be conducted over the next eight to nine months.

IT IS great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on petrol, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer's travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our petrol tanks. What a way to build our country.

THE United Nations was to halt food hand-outs for up to 800,000 Palestinians yesterday because of a severe fuel shortage in Gaza brought on by an Israeli economic blockade. John Ging, the director of operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, said there had been an inadequate supply of fuel from Israel to Gaza for 10 months until it was finally halted two weeks ago. "The devastating humanitarian impact is entirely predictable," Mr Ging said.

Motorists can expect to pay even more at the bowser with oil prices to continue rising, says the chief of Caltex Australia. "There is long-term upward pressure on petrol prices and Australians, like motorists around the world, can expect to pay more," Caltex chairman Elizabeth Bryan told shareholders today at the company's annual general meeting in Sydney. Ms Bryan said that, as an oil refiner and marketer rather than producer or explorer, Caltex was forced to pay the world price for oil.

One of Australia's largest coal terminals has been approved for central Queensland. Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett has signed off on the environmental impact study for Wiggins Island Coal Terminal, an expansion of Gladstone port's coal terminal. It follows the Queensland government's approval earlier this year. Premier Anna Bligh said the terminal would open in 2012-13, employing 500 people in construction and 130 in operation.

Oil and gas producer Woodside Petroleum said first-quarter output fell 4% from a year earlier due to the impact of cyclones, maintenance of some fields and the sale of assets. Quarterly output of 17.2 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) also fell 4% on the previous quarter.

Apache Corp., the US oil and gas company operating on five continents, and Santos plan to build an $800 million natural gas project in Western Australia to benefit from rising prices for the fuel. The partners have approved the Devil Creek project, which will tap gas from the offshore Reindeer field for supply to customers in Western Australia, Tim Wall, managing director of Apache's Australian unit, said in an interview. The project may start up in 2010, Apache says on a Web site on the project.