Australia's government will spend A$4.5 billion (US$3.4 billion) in partnership with private investors to build up to eight commercial power stations testing clean coal and solar technologies, Treasurer Wayne Swan said on Tuesday.

General Electric Co plans to invest $100 million in a factory to build high-tech batteries for heavy equipment, which it believes could be a $1 billion business over the next decade.

The Environmental Protection Agency will oversee the cleanup of a huge coal ash spill that brought national attention to the environmental risks of storing the power plant byproduct. The agency

Schott Solar, seeking to capture a big chunk of the US solar market, will unveil a new US facility on Monday that will produce both solar thermal and photovoltaic solar components.

The unit of privately held German glassmaker Schott AG said its Albuquerque, New Mexico facility employs 300 workers and will be up to 350 staff by the end of the year.

Walk around the floor of Lightfair International, the lighting industry

US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said on Friday he will travel to China this year to promote sales of US clean energy goods as part of the Obama administration's effort to fight global warming.

"This would be a win-win for jobs in the United States, as well as addressing a very serious problem of the planet," Locke told Reuters in an interview.

An important and realistic front page report was published in a local English daily on the subject. It deserves national attention and urgent action by the government if it is really serious in providing more power within the next two years (by December 2012).

The Obama administration said Thursday it wanted to officially terminate the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage waste site and instead spend $197 million to phase out the project and "explore alternatives" for nuclear waste disposal.

Citing financial and environmental reasons, Gov. David A. Paterson signed an executive order on Tuesday directing state agencies to phase out the purchase and use of bottled water at government workplaces.

PRESIDENT OBAMA and the other leaders at the Group of 20 meeting last month vowed to both pursue a