In his State of the Union address late last month, President Barack Obama spent a lot of time outlining plans for a more energy-independent, “all-energy-sources-go” US. And while he didn’t specifically mention the Commerce Department’s ongoing investigation into solar-cell “dumping” by China, he did announce the launch of a new Trade Enforcement Unit and added, “There will be more inspections …”

Now, as OilPrice.com notes, “it’s wind power’s turn.”

Asking whether a US-China “energy trade war” is imminent, OilPrice.com’s John Daly writes that Commerce is targeting for investigation China’s imports of utility-scale wind towers to the US. He adds:

“What is surprising about the brewing dispute is the relatively minor amounts of money involved … (A)ccording to US Customs statistics, in 2010 China’s wind technology exports were worth a paltry $104 million.”

That small figure would certainly seem to suggest there’s some “fight-picking” going on in international trade officialdom. However, another theory is floated by Liu Pengxuwhen, deputy director of the legal services division for the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products.

Pengxuwhen says, “(S)ince the US presidential election is around the corner, we noted that the US government continuously makes speeches on domestic alternative energy policies, expressing support for its alternative energy industry. In connection with such a political environment, we are convinced that the United States’ launch of the ‘anti-dumping and anti-subsidy’ investigation is inevitably connected with political considerations.”

Hmm … might he be onto something there? Read more details at OilPrice.com and decide for yourself.

Coming into office with the promise to build the “greenest government ever,” Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition has instead drawn an increasing amount of fire from environmentalists, clean-energy advocates and others calling for a more sustainable Britain. In the case of the government’s proposal late last year to abruptly cut incentives for solar-panel installations in half, even the country’s High Court of Appeals is crying “foul.”

A three-judge panel found today that the government’s claim that it could reduce those incentives at will ahead of the predetermined expiration date “offends the legality principle.”

Friends of the Earth, the UK-based solar-energy firm Solar Century and several other parties last year filed suit against Chris Huhne, the government’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, after his agency — the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) — announced plans to halve the feed-in tariff (FIT) rates ahead of schedule for homeowners who installed solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. The news threw solar-energy companies into an uproar: the sudden reduction, they said, created massive uncertainty for the market and threatened to kill Britain’s nascent solar-power industry just as it was moving from a crawl to a walk.

DECC claims the move was prompted by the overwhelming response to the solar incentive. With so many homeowners taking advantage of the tariff, DECC said its budget would be quickly exhausted if tariff rates weren’t cut.

The ironic part in all this is that the feed-in tariffs were already scheduled to adjust to a lower rate early this year.

While Friends of the Earth is hailing the court’s latest ruling, it’s also urging the government to give up the opportunity to appeal to the Supreme Court.

“This would extend the uncertainty for the industry,” a Friends of the Earth statement read.

Huhne, on the other hand, is criticizing the court’s decision and said DECC is seeking permission to appeal.

“We want to maximize the number of installations that are possible within the available budget rather than use available money to pay a higher tariff to half the number of installations,” he said in a statement. “Solar PV can have strong and vibrant future in UK and we want a lasting FITs scheme to support that future and jobs in the industry.”

Challenging this latest ruling in court yet again, though? Looks like a pretty strange way to show your “support.”

And that’s cause for concern in an era when energy and carbon have become critically important issues for politicians to tackle. So it’s good to see that the International Energy Agency (IEA) actually offers courses for officials and others who want to learn about things like energy security, markets, sustainability and technology.

This year’s IEA Energy Training Week, which actually lasts just five days, is set for April 2 through 6 in Paris.

During that time, the agency will run seven English-language courses, including introductory classes on oil and gas market basics and on the basics of energy efficiency and renewable energy. While the program targets leaders in developing economies, there are more than a few officials — from the US, in particular — we’d love to see in the IEA’s classrooms this spring. Then, again, the problem there is probably just as much money-related (ie, hundreds of millions of dollars in oil, gas and coal lobbying) as education-related.

But oil drilling is what more and more US citizens might soon be finding during their back-to-nature getaways.

Faced with steep cuts in government funding, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission this week gave its director the go-ahead to negotiate a surface use agreement and lease with Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. The deal would allow Anadarko to drill multiple horizontal wells from one pad in the 688-acre St. Vrain State Park.

According to a report in the Denver Business Journal, granting drilling rights to Anadarko is aimed at raising revenues to make up for steep cuts in state government funding. General fund support for state parks has dropped from $7.1 million in 2009 to zero, the journal reported.

Ohio legislators last summer also approved oil and gas drilling in state parks, and created a new commission to oversee the leasing process across the state.

It’s all enough to make Prime Minister David Cameron wish he had never pledged to usher in “the greenest government ever” when his coalition began leading in 2010.

Yes, Britain’s base of renewable energy has expanded over the past year. The government reported last week that consumption of green energy rose by 27 percent from 2008 to 2010 (although, buried in the fine print is the fact that solar, hydro and wind/wave/tidal energy actually declined under Cameron’s watch … from 5.3 terawatt-hours in 2009 to 3.6 terawatt-hours in 2010). And Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, points to plans in the coming financial year for £2.5 billion worth of investment in renewable energy projects in the UK, with the potential to create almost 12,000 jobs.

At the same time, though, the government is trying to slash incentives — in the form of feed-in tariffs — for small-scale solar energy projects such as rooftop photovoltaics, a move that late last month was declared illegal by the country’s High Court. Solar industry executives such as Solarcentury’s Jeremy Leggett have called that decision an “absurdity” that threatens to bankrupt homegrown solar companies and put 25,000 people out of work. (Cameron’s government has until this Wednesday, Jan. 4, to appeal the High Court’s finding.)

While promising to meet EU goals of generating 15 percent of its energy from clean sources by 2020, Britain has also just issued 46 new licenses to explore for oil and gas in the North Sea, with Energy Minister Charles Hendry saying he looks forward to a “prosperous” 2012 for the nation’s fossil-fuel sector.

For a country where the latest statistics show that one in four citizens is experiencing “fuel poverty,” it would seem to make sense to try and squeeze every last kilowatt of energy possible from every source, low-carbon or otherwise. But how then to explain the attempt to strangle the domestic burgeoning solar industry in its infancy? Two phrases come to mind for a nation aggressively pursuing austerity measures at the same time it’s trying to boost energy security: “penny-wise and pound-foolish” and “desperate.”

The controversial planned pipeline would carry heavy crude from Canada’s Alberta tar sands to oil refineries on the US Gulf Coast. Supporters tout the project as a promising job-creator, pointing to a study conducted for the developer TransCanada that found the pipeline extension could create nearly 119,000 “person-years of employment” (not the same as actual jobs, since two person-years could mean just one job that lasts for two years).

However, opponents — leading US climate scientist James Hansen among them — say the expansion of dirty and environmentally damaging tar-sands production would mean “game over” for the planet’s climate. They also cite studies showing the project would generate far fewer jobs than TransCanada says.

US President Barack Obama had earlier delayed a decision on the pipeline until 2013. However, some people looking at the implications of this latest vote see it not as a way to circumvent the president and launch construction ASAP … but as a move that actually kills the project.

How? By forcing a decision on Keystone XL in a two-month time-frame, the US State Department would not be able to complete the studies needed to make a recommendation. As a result, the State Department would be forced to say no.

So where’s the logic in that? The most likely explanation: it’s all about politics. The 2012 US presidential race is about to go into high speed. Unemployment, while it has recently dropped, is still high. The consumer economy and job growth both remain anemic. By forcing a decision to reject the tar-sands pipeline ahead of the November 2012 election, Republican opponents can brand the Obama administration as a “job-killer.”

But what does any of this have to do with energy security, fossil-fuel-based or otherwise? Absolutely nothing. As a post on ThinkProgress today noted, it’s “Keystone Kabuki,” pure and simple.

The Cape Wind project, which promises a maximum generating capacity of 454 megawatts (the average would be about 170 megawatts), would be located in Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts’ Cape Cod. Since developers Cape Wind Associates first applied for a federal permit in 2001, the project has been fraught with controversy.

In the latest development, the US Court of Appeals last week revoked a decision by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that found the project would pose “no hazard” to regional aviation.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which opposes the wind farm, welcomed the court’s decision.

“It is time for Cape Wind and the Department of Interior to relocate this project to another site that will not only protect Nantucket Sound, but allow properly sited offshore wind development in a timely way,” said Audra Parker, the alliance’s president and CEO. “After ten years, Cape Wind continues to face legal and financial challenges, while better and cheaper forms of green energy are widely available. The free market has shown little or no interest in Cape Wind, the federal government has refused to issue a loan guarantee for the project, and now a federal court has dealt Cape Wind a major setback in rejecting the FAA’s determination.”

A spokesperson for Cape Wind, however, said the ruling merely requires the FAA to elaborate more on its previous determination.

“The FAA has reviewed Cape Wind for eight years and repeatedly determined that Cape Wind did not pose a hazard to air navigation,” said Mark Rodgers, the developer’s communications director. “The essence of today’s court ruling is that the FAA needs to better explain its Determination of No Hazard. We are confident that after the FAA does this, that their decision will stand and we do not foresee any impact on the project’s schedule in moving forward.”

Rodgers added that the existing Determination of No Hazard — the third by the FAA — was set to expire shortly, meaning, “we were going to have to re-apply at that time anyway.”

“(T)his lets us begin that process sooner,” he said.

In addition to expressing concern about the “very real dangers and risks to the operations and safety” of some 400,000 flights that traverse the sound each year, the alliance says the wind farm would also damage the local environment, ruin views, hurt the area’s tourist and fishing economy and pose hazards to marine vessel navigation.

The problem, according to a group of US-based companies that make solar cells and panels, isn’t that material costs have been dropping and forcing PV prices downward — a worldwide average of 40 percent this year alone. It’s that China has massively subsidized PV manufacturing and “dumped” low-cost products onto overseas markets, the group says.

SolarWorld, which is headquartered in Germany but operates manufacturing facilities in the US, is now representing itself and six other US manufacturers — which aren’t being publicly named — in complaints about China’s PV subsidy policies. As the founding member of the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing, SolarWorld today filed complaints today with the US Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission.

“Artificially low-priced solar products from China are crippling the domestic industry,” said Gordon Brinser, president of SolarWorld Industries America Inc., based in Hillsboro, Oregon. “China actually has no production cost advantage. Labor makes up a modest share of solar-industry costs, China’s labor is less productive, its raw material and equipment have come from the West and China must pay for long-distance shipping. Yet, massive state subsidies and sponsorship have enabled Chinese manufacturers to illegally dump their products into a wide-open US market.”

The news release from SolarWorld notes that seven US solar companies have shut down or downsized over the past year-and-a-half. (That list presumably includes Solyndra, which since declaring bankruptcy this year has become a lightning rod for critics of the Obama administration, as the company had received a $535 million loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy.)

SolarWorld also pointed out that imports of solar cells and panels from China have risen astronomically in recent years, with imports in July 2011 alone exceeding the total for 2010.

In its petitions, SolarWorld is asking the federal government to impose duties to provide relief to US-based manufacturers of crystalline silicon solar cells. The complaints don’t include thin-film solar cells made from cadmium telluride, copper indium gallium selenide or amorphous silicon. They also exclude non-photovoltaic technologies such as solar thermal and concentrated solar power.

SolarWorld’s complaints are more narrowly focused than those filed in 2010 by the United Steelworkers, which contend that China is engaging in illegal trade activities affecting the entire renewable energy industry.

The new FERC order requires public utility transmission providers to improve transmission planning processes and allocate costs for new transmission facilities to the beneficiaries of those facilities. It also requires public utility transmission providers to align transmission planning and cost allocation. According to the agency, the new requirements will remove barriers to development of transmission facilities.

“These changes will provide consumers with greater access to efficient, low-cost electricity,” said Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of FERC.

The new requirements will take effect within 60 days of publication in the Federal Register.