It’s been, in equal measure, a fun, grueling, and educational ride.

Special thanks are owed to the folks who got it all started and kept it going—Mark Gongloff, Jeff Ball, and Russell Gold—not to mention all the Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal folks who fed the beast so well all this time.

Of course, the biggest thanks of all goes to our readers—both of you. You’re what got us out of bed in the wee hours every morning. Well, that–and the paycheck.

And you can still get your fix of environmental and energy news right here, at the WSJ Environment page and the Energy, Oil, and Gas page.

A big part of that shift was—and still is—environmental concern. The world’s (half-hearted) efforts to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions were meant to spur (and might yet) the development and deployment of a whole new world of cleaner energy.

But we also noted another rationale for a shift in the way the world produces and uses energy: the bottom line. Whether it’s a big-box retailer changing the way it packs and ships goods or the growing conviction that energy efficiency and “negawatts” are the cheapest, cleanest source of energy available today, the cleaner way of doing things is very often the smarter way of doing things.

That it isn’t always the case is less of an indictment of clean energy than of the current energy system itself.

To take a single example: The price that American drivers pay at the pump, frightening as it is these days, does not reflect the cost of oil and gasoline. There are additional costs to the reliance on oil that simply don’t show up in the twirling numbers at the gas pump, whether they are the environmental costs of oil extraction, transport and combustion, or the cost of U.S. military engagement to protect oil supplies and keep vital sea lanes open.

For economists, all these hidden costs are called “externalities.” They’re as real as they are hard to spot, from the Fifth Fleet’s operating expenses to the pernicious health costs of a coal-fired electricity sector.

For policymakers, these externalities represent an opportunity as much as a headache. For all the worries that a bigger role for government in the energy business—from cap-and-trade schemes to solar-power subsidies—represents a retreat from free markets, that’s hardly the case. Energy markets aren’t “free” today, and the playing field is anything but level.

New energy policies that seek to redress those problems, and unleash rather than further stifle a genuine market for energy, will point the way toward a new energy future that makes sense, both environmentally and economically. That’s because, if new policies set out to tackle those externalities once and for all, the environmental answer will quite often become the economic answer. Everything has its price—and its cost.

Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems, the biggest maker of wind turbines in the world, can’t get any love from investors. Its share price, after an up-and-down 2009, is roughly where it was at the start of last year.

Some analysts think that’s out of whack. HSBC today put a “buy” on Vestas shares and reiterated a target price of 500 Danish kroner; the stock today trades at around 333, well off the highs it reached last spring and summer. Jeffries Research also put out a “buy” recommendation today, though with a slightly lower target price.

HSBC’s reasoning is simple enough: Since the beginning of December, turbine orders have started to flow again. Vestas is maintaining its position behind General Electric as the number-two turbine company in the U.S., the world’s biggest wind market. And that market can only grow, the bank figures, as Washington hands out more clean-energy grants and prepares to pass a national renewable-energy standard. HSBC says that Vestas’ 30% discount to its peer group is “completely unjustifed.”

Jeffries makes similar arguments, highlighting a big new turbine order expected in Kenya to stress the strength of Vestas’ order book and its unparalleled global reach.

Sure, Vestas—like GE, Gamesa, Siemens and other big turbine makers—have worries. The explosion of China’s wind industry has proven a double-edged sword. First, that big and fast-growing market was partly closed to foreign suppliers. And the rapid growth of China’s wind industry has created scores of wind-turbine makers itching to start exporting their wares to Europe and America—which could, one day, threaten market share and margins for the established players.

In the meantime, HSBC says, investors could do a lot worse than to hitch their wagon to a global leader whose shares look cheap.

The industry is adding 144 geothermal power plants in 14 states, says Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association. That’s up from 121 projects on the books last March and a 73% increase from the 83 projects underway two years ago.

“We’ve added 200 megawatts in the last year,” said Mr. Gawell, during a stop at The Wall Street Journal’s New York office on Wednesday ahead of the industry’s big finance forum today. “Compared to wind, it’s not much. But it is a lot for a small industry with only 3,000 installed megawatts.”

One big shot in the arm: The federal stimulus, which is chanelling $400 million to the geothermal industry in the form of tax incentives and cash grants. The trade group has seen member ship swell to about 150 from just 30 members five years ago.

Another big key: Technology. Geothermal companies are developing new technologies that allow lower-temperature water in the earth’s core to be turned into geothermal energy. That makes development possible in more place, putting states such as Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana on the map in addition to traditional geothermal heartlands such as California.

Geothermal’s potential, thanks to advanced technologies, could be huge. The U.S. Geological Survey notes about 6,000 megawatts of discovered geothermal supplies (that’s like six nuclear power plants), with undiscovered potential between 8,000 and 73,000 megawatts. New technology could—theoretically—open the door to a whopping 800,000 megawatts.

Geothermal is renewable energy, like wind and solar power—but with two big advantages: It provides continuous, baseload power, not just when the wind blows or the sun shines, and it is cheaper than wind or solar power.

“It’s being rediscovered in the U.S.,” Mr. Gawell says. While the U.S. is currently the world leader, the geothermal industry today is where the wind-power industry was 20 or 30 years ago, he says.

And given the role that big corporates—such as General Electric and Siemens—played in the explosion of the wind industry, the logical question is, when will big companies pile into geothermal? GE has been showing up at geothermal meetings lately, Mr. Gawell says, and GE Energy Financial Services finances some geothermal investments.

Photo credit.

The U.S. CFTC will outline today limits on positions energy traders can hold, the belated response to worries speculators were behind big price spikes in 2008, in the WSJ.

Iran will start winding down fuel subsidies, which eat up 30% of its budget, AP reports in the WSJ.

If North Sea oil and gas production was already reeling, the recession kicked the industry while it was down and lowered investment in the region, in the FT.

Want to know why President Obama’s clean-energy dreams have failed to materialize? Because it’s the same “magical thinking” that has prevailed since the Carter years, argue Nordhaus and Shellenberger in Foreign Policy. What’s needed instead is hard-headed investment in energy technology, they argue.

Now that the health-care fight is over, T. Boone Pickens is back on his natural-gas powered soap box, in the NYT.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says a decision on the Cape Wind offshore wind farm is due before April, a sign the decade-long scrum between clean energy and clean vistas is drawing to a close, in the NYT.

The U.K. is going full hog on offshore wind, but that doesn’t mean the strategy is without its risks, in Green Inc. Offshore wind makes more sense for the U.K. than the U.S., but America still needs to do something big when it comes to clean energy, argues Geoff Styles. Because “small wind” sure isn’t doing the trick, in the WSJ.

U.S. utilities are struggling to plan major infrastructure investments after two years of declining demand for electricity, throwing the sector into turmoil, in the WSJ. Utilities in California won’t meet their 2010 targets for renewable energy despite a heroic last-minute push, at Earth2Tech.

Germany’s done too much—but the country is close to reaching an agreement to cut generous subsidies for solar power, hoping to avoid a Spain-style implosion, in Reuters.

Finally, could China lose its appetite for coal? It could if reliance on coal starts to hurt, rather than enhance, energy security, at the FT’s Energy Source.

As Congress gets back to work, one of the big questions looming on the Hill is whether it’s time to park plans for a national curb on greenhouse-gas emissions and focus on a narrower energy bill. The rationale? Energy reform, even to boost clean energy, enjoys some cross-aisle support. Capping greenhouse-gas emissions has proven a tough slog even within the majority Democrats. And the health-care fight has undoubtedly dented enthusiasm for another bruising battle.

There’s plenty of chatter out there to that effect. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said yesterday that “I think you can expect everything but cap-and-trade,” referring to upcoming Senate work on energy legislation. Politico details the back-and-forth.

Sen. John Kerry, co-author of two of the four cap-and-trade bills bouncing about, is horrified by the prospect. He told E&E News:

“If you separate climate from energy reform, you slow your ability to create those clean jobs because every market expert tells you those energy reforms can’t take hold unless you price carbon. Unless you do something comprehensive you’re just going a more expensive, less effective route and you’ll keep trailing other countries.”

But is that really the case? Sure, a higher price on carbon emissions would be good news for everything that’s low-carbon, including renewable energy, nuclear power, and clean coal. But plenty of big countries have made huge strides in clean energy without putting a pricetag on carbon emissions.

America’s favorite green bogeyman, China, has the world’s most vibrant wind-power market, huge plans for growth in solar power, and a very ambitious schedule for new nuclear plant construction. All without any domestic caps on greenhouse-gas emissions (or international cooperation on emissions limits, either.)

When the Energy Information Administration crunched the numbers on the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill—passed last summer by the House—it found that the clean-energy provisions and cap-and-trade plan would indeed boost clean energy. But, it’s complicated.

The EIA found that all the costly and cumbersome provisions in Waxman-Markey would only boost renewable energy a modest amount over what would be built anyway. Renewables would provide 878 billion kilowatt hours in 2020 under the bill, including its nationwide renewable-energy standard, compared with 708 billion kWh if nothing was done.

It’s hard to say just what the cap-and-trade part of the bill would do for wind and solar. State-wide renewable-energy policies, for example, are a huge driver of new investment.

Yes, nuclear power and clean coal could be big beneficiaries of concerted energy and climate policies. But even that’s not a slam dunk. The EIA found that in a “high-cost” future, when nuclear and clean coal cost more than expected (ask the nuclear industry about budget overruns), nuclear power increases only marginally and clean coal stays a niche power technology.

In other words, many legislators, the White House, and and environmentalists are circling the wagons to fight this year for “comprehensive” energy and climate legislation. But cap-and-trade plans still place plenty of pushback.

There’s reason to think a clean-energy future could still be in the offing even if Congress does take the path of least resistance and scraps plans for cap-and-trade this year.

In Washington, the fate of energy and climate legislation hangs in the balance. The question: Is it wiser to try to pass stand-alone energy legislation, without all the controversial climate-change bits, or push for the whole enchilada? In Politico and Green Wire.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s position is clear: Climate legislation now would strangle U.S. businesses still struggling with the recession, also in Green Wire. NASA’s James Hansen also hates cap-and-trade, and plans more acts of civil disobedience, in The Guardian.

So what about geo-engineering? Scientists will convene a conference this March to study emergency options for checking temperature increases, also in The Guardian.

More fallout post-Copenhagen: China’s Janus-faced approach to international affairs reveals a “dragon in sheep’s clothing,” says a NYT op-ed: “As Copenhagen revealed, China is not the self-touted rising superpower but a scheming power that uses poor states as a front to obstruct progress through procedural wrangling.”

Either way, China and other developing countries will meet later this month to detail their voluntary actions on climate change, part of the follow-up to the much-attacked Copenhagen Accord, in Reuters.

The NYT’s Room for Debate looks at “green civil war,” or the battle between preservation and the development of new clean-energy sources.

T. Boone Pickens gets colder feet: The oilman-cum-wind maven halves his wind-turbine order and now says plans for a big Texas wind farm are shelved, in the Dallas Morning News.

From the Detroit Auto Show, General Motors has a recipe for success: Build more trucks. China’s BYD has electric cars, but isn’t sure yet how to attack the U.S. market. And more video on Tesla’s electric roadster, all in the WSJ.

Finally, Venezuela may be oil-rich, but it’s energy-poor. The country will start five months of rolling blackouts to deal with electricity shortages, in Bloomberg.

Earlier Tuesday, Kuwait’s Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah al-Sabah told reporters that $82 oil was “fantastic” and said the Gulf state doesn’t think OPEC needs to change production in March at its next policy meeting based on current prices.

An official in Kuwait’s Supreme Petroleum Council then told Zawya-Dow Jones that OPEC “will not consider it an alarming event even if oil hits $100…” Last week, Libya’s top oil official, Shokri Ghanem, said, “As long as (oil prices) are under $100 there is no need for (OPEC) action.”

For months, the 12-nation cartel has repeated like a mantra its comfort with crude oil prices between $70 and $80 a barrel. That’s a relatively tolerable level for consumers, and certainly cheery for OPEC states, whose drilling costs are a tiny fraction of today’s $81 oil price in New York.

Olivier Jakob, an analyst with Swiss-based Petromatrix, thinks the recent the recent OPEC chatter is basically talking up prices. “While OPEC will blame higher oil prices on speculators, they are trying to sponsor the same speculation by making the rounds saying that OPEC will not move a finger unless [West Texas Intermediate] rises above $100 a barrel,” Mr. Jakob said in a research note Tuesday, referring to the U.S. oil-price benchmark.

Moderate voices within OPEC–such as Saudi Arabia, which holds most of OPEC’s spare production capacity–recoil at suggestions that OPEC wants higher prices and say they’re genuinely pleased with prices hovering between $70 and $80.

At that level, OPEC crude is still the best game in town compared with many of the high-cost oil-drilling projects in non-OPEC states, like Canada, that usually require a sustained oil price of at least $75 to be profitable.

And consumers will still fill up their vehicles at $75 crude; when crude hits $100, that equation changes substantially, as seen in 2008, when high prices at the pump poleaxed demand for oil. Remember: OPEC worries about “security of demand” the same way Western countries worry about security of supplies.

The problem for OPEC: The group’s more moderate voices usually don’t talk down the more hawkish OPEC elements, at least publicly. That leaves the impression to most outside observers that OPEC as a group is bent on squeezing consumers.

The big unknown is at what point OPEC will formally start to use some of its substantial overhang in spare oil-production capacity after keeping its production target unchanged since Dec 2008.

Saudi Arabia has around 4.5 million barrels a day of idle capacity–more than the total pumping capacity of OPEC’s No 2. producer, Iran–and some oil analysts think the kingdom will be reluctant to see oil prices move far above $80 a barrel over a sustained period.

But the real battleground for aviation over the next two decades could play out among smaller, regional jets–100-plus seat planes that play an increasingly large role in air transportation in the U.S., Latin America, and Asia.

That’s the target market for Pratt & Whitney’s newest jet engine, the Pure Power PW1000G, which will be fitted to the latest regional jets from Bombardier and Mitsubishi in 2013 and 2014. The new engine is “the biggest step in engine technology since the 747,” says Alan Epstein, P&W’s vice-president for Technology and Environment and a 30-year veteran of MIT.

The new P&W engine, which garnered Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New” award last year, promises to cut fuel consumption by between 12% and 15%. That by itself is good news for carriers wracked by high oil prices. But lower fuel consumption also means fewer carbon emissions. The engine also cuts down engine noise, which means the new planes could operate from more airports with strict environmental standards.

P&W’s engine marks a departure from traditional turbofan engines used in jets: It has a big, 250-pound gear in the middle of it. That means it can use a bigger fan in the front, generate a lot more thrust, and still cut fuel consumption. The redesigned engine also has fewer, lighter parts than traditional engines. The company says that can cut maintenance costs by $1.5 million annually per plane.

P&W, a unit of United Technologies, is banking on the engine’s efficiency to become a big selling point with regional-jet makers; Bombardier alone expects to sell 6,300 new 100-to-150 seat aircraft over the next twenty years.

Just in case, though, the Obama administration is helping out: P&W got one of the biggest awards, worth $110 million in clean-tech manufacturing tax credits, from the $2.3 billion announced by the White House Friday, to retool its factory to produce the new engine.

Chevron warns on fourth-quarter earnings due to a weak refining environment that couldn’t offset higher oil prices, in the WSJ.

Natural gas finds a new, shallow-water frontier: McMoRan’s potentially huge shallow-water find in the Gulf of Mexico raises hopes of abundant, low-cost supplies, in the Houston Chronicle.

More scorecards on President Obama’s first year in office. Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress figures the president went 10-for-10 on the think thank’s clean-energy prescriptions, at Grist.

California is studying ways to return money from climate-change plans to consumers, through rebates or tax cuts elsewhere, in the WSJ. California’s approach represents another way of buying support for oft-controversial climate plans, in Greenspace.

Electric cars stole the show at the opening of the Detroit Auto Show, even if they and their hybrid cousins are still terribly niche. GM warns of teething pains, in the NYT:”’It’s going to take us three generations of range-extended electric vehicles to get any anywhere near reasonable costs,’ said Thomas Stephens, G.M.’s vice chairman for product development.”

GM’s Bob Lutz also warns that first-generation batteries will be very fickle things, especially in winter, in the WSJ. More on all the new models at Earth2Tech.

Venezuela’s teetering economy could take another hit from power shortages, brought about as low rainfall cripples key hydroelectric plants. Who’s to blame—El Nino or La Corrupcion?, in the FT.

It’s official—China scraps the restriction on foreign parts in turbines used for wind farms, potentially opening up the world’s fastest-growing market to more foreign investment, in AFP.

Finally, what ever happened to that blue-ribbon panel meant to find an answer to Yucca Mountain? It has yet to be formed, leaving the nuclear industry to struggle still with the waste question, in Greenwire.