WASHINGTON – Sen. Barbara Boxer on Tuesday announced that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee would draft a new climate bill that would help consumers avoid higher prices and create new jobs in clean energy. “We all understand the urgent need for action, and this is a great way to reinvigorate the economy,” Boxer said as she outlined the principles she wanted included in a bill to limit and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Even with soaring energy costs, home inspector Mark Cannella finds that many homeowners still don't understand the value of a home audit.

When it’s very hot or cold outside, your house has to work hard to make that air the perfect temperature for indoors. But if it were 55 degrees year-round, heating and cooling would be a lot easier. And that happens to be the temperature of the ground, from about six or eight feet down to as far as you can dig – a fact exploited by geothermal heating and cooling systems. “It doesn’t matter how hot it is outside, or how cold it is outside,” said Ryk Lesser of Green Energy Design & General Store in Easton, Md.

A lot of people got a shock in the mail over the past couple of days: a whopping power bill. January’s bills are typically among the year’s highest, and this year’s came loaded with the effects of four weeks of harsh winter, a longer-than-average billing period, and rate increases for Washington customers.

WASHINGTON – The Nobel Prize winner nominated to head the Energy Department said Tuesday that he would focus the agency in part on global warming, a sharp departure from the agency’s priorities during the Bush administration. “If we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic, disruptive changes to our climate,” physicist Steven Chu told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee during his confirmation hearing.