E2 Morning Round-up: Obama to tout clean energy in Wisconsin speech, unions and greens hit the road to salvage energy bill, Rand Paul takes aim at EPA, and more

On tap Monday III: Commerce chief heads to Gulf

Obama visited Florida over the weekend and pledged to stay on top of the spill cleanup, and now Commerce Secretary Gary Locke is en route to Louisiana as the administration tries to show that it’s staying engaged in the region even though the oil has stopped flowing from BP’s ruptured well.

Locke heads to Louisiana Monday where he will “take a tour of a Gulf seafood processing plant in Lafitte, La, and attend lunch with members of the local seafood and restaurant industry in Metairie, La. Later, he will hold an economic roundtable with community members and business people impacted by the BP oil spill,” the White House said.

Uneven results for energy stimulus

My colleague Darren Goode has a new story about the Energy Department inspector general’s review of stimulus spending. The grades? Mixed.

Rand Paul: “We have a president who is forcing the EPA down our throats.”

The Kentucky GOP Senate candidate made waves a couple of weeks ago when he questioned whether the federal government should overhaul mine safety rules.

On Saturday, according to the Associated Press, he accused Obama administration regulators of trying to shut down Kentucky coal mining, alleging at a campaign stop that Obama “cares nothing about Kentucky and cares even less about Kentucky coal.”

“We have a president who is forcing the EPA down our throats,” Paul said in the AP account. “Even without changing the rules, the EPA is stifling the permit process, and people [are] out of work here because of the president and his policies.

“With all due respect, Mr. President, you’re wrong, and you need to stay out of Kentucky affairs. And you need to keep the EPA out of our affairs because we need jobs, and we’re not going to get jobs with a busybody EPA that’s in our way.”

Big New York Times weekend piece connects the dots on climate change and the rough summer

Disasters ranging from the Russian heat waves to the floods in Pakistan — not to mention the baking U.S. East Coast — have scientists calling the summer of 2010 a harbinger of what’s to come as greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising.

“Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes,” the Times reports.

“The collective answer of the scientific community can be boiled down to a single word: probably.”

“The climate is changing,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. “Extreme events are occurring with greater frequency, and in many cases with greater intensity.”

Feds, BP finalizing plans for ‘bottom kill’ of ruptured well

“BP and the U.S. government may decide as soon as Monday to move ahead with a four-day process to permanently plug the source of the worst maritime oil leak in the nation’s history through a ‘bottom kill’ of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico,” reports MarketWatch.

“’We are preparing risk assessments and plans,’ BP spokesman Robert Wine wrote in an e-mail to MarketWatch on Sunday, exactly one month since the company stopped the leak.

“Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander and lead government official overseeing the response to the accident, said further tests are needed before BP starts the bottom kill.”

“The procedure includes pumping cement into the area near the top of the oil reservoir to seal it off from the bottom of the well.”

Report: BP plans Libyan drilling this fall 

Dow Jones reports:

“U.K. oil giant BP PLC is expected to start its deep water drilling operations in Libya by October at the latest, Libya’s top oil official said Monday.”

“’They are delaying because of technical problems, they want to be assured that all the instruments are working well and they don’t want a repeat of Macondo — it may take another two months at most,’ Shokri Ghanem, Chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corp., or NOC, told Zawya Dow Jones by telephone.”

“BP’s plans to drill at least five wells in Libya’s Gulf of Sirte, at depths greater than the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, have some people worried about a similar ecological disaster.”

California’s renewable energy efforts highlight the promise and challenges of green power

NPR has a detailed look at state programs in California to scale up use of wind, solar and other renewable sources. California has set an ambitious goal of deriving one-third of its power from renewables by 2020, but getting there will be tough.

In case you missed it:

Over the past couple of days on E2, we have looked at:

• The Chamber of Commerce filing suit against EPA over its finding that greenhouse gases threaten humans — a conclusion that’s the legal underpinning for EPA climate regulations.

• The Sierra Club’s executive director acknowledging that green groups are getting their “asses kicked” inside the Beltway, and talking about what to do about it.

• Climate advocates looking outside the United Nations for progress on emissions after last year’s disappointing Copenhagen summit.

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