Bloomberg: Is Richard Branson Gearing Up to Take On Tesla?

Richard Branson has slapped his Virgin brand on trains, planes, spacecraft, and (soon) cruise ships. Are cars next?

Bloomberg TV tracked Branson down at the Virgin garage in Miami and popped the question: Where is Virgin going with this?

"We have teams of people working on electric cars," Branson said. "So you never know -- you may find Virgin competing with Tesla in the car business as we do in the space business. We will see what happens."

Tampa Bay Times: The Koch Brothers Say Solar Energy Will Flop; Georgia Says They're Wrong

Support solar energy, and you will support higher electric bills. Less reliability. More tax subsidies and unwanted government interference.

This is what the critics said in Georgia in 2013, and they're saying it again in Florida today.

"Total foolishness," Georgia Public Service Commissioner Bubba McDonald said Wednesday. "We have no state subsidies, and there has been no upward pressure on rates. If anything, it's held down the cost of fuel.

"They can come down to Florida and blow all the smoke they want, but don't you believe it. I initiated this in 2013, and I had no problem getting through a primary and general election in 2014. What does that tell you about how solar energy is working in Georgia?"

Washington Post: Obama to Cut Federal Government’s Carbon Emissions 40% Over 10 Years

President Obama signed an executive order Thursday dictating the federal government will cut its greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent over the next decade from 2008 levels and increase the share of renewable energy in the federal government’s electricity supply to 30 percent during that same period.

Simultaneously, federal suppliers including Honeywell, IBM, General Electric and other major U.S. firms are pledging to reduce their own carbon footprint by 5 million metric tons over the next 10 years compared with 2008 levels. Taken together with the new executive order, this would cut overall U.S. emissions by 26 million tons by 2025, the equivalent of taking nearly 5.5 million cars off the roads for a year.

New York Times: McConnell Urges States to Help Thwart Obama’s ‘War on Coal’

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has begun an aggressive campaign to block President Obama’s climate change agenda in statehouses and courtrooms across the country, arenas far beyond Mr. McConnell’s official reach and authority.

The campaign of Mr. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is aimed at stopping a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations requiring states to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Engineer: US to Help China Develop a New Kind of Cheaper, Safer Nuclear Reactor

Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) have agreed to work together to advance salt-cooled nuclear reactor technologies that operate at low pressures and with passive safety systems that don’t require human intervention.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences already has plans to build a prototype of a fluoride high-temperature reactor (FHR) and hopes to learn from Oak Ridge’s experience of building and running the world’s only molten salt reactor in the 1960s.