LONDON (Reuters) – More than half of all new electricity capacity added in the United States and Europe last year was from renewable power such as wind and solar, a body backed by the International Energy Agency and the UN reported.

OSLO (Reuters) – The United States is asking for ideas about how to tackle global warming without raising expectations of breakthroughs in 2010 ahead of climate talks among the world’s top emitters in Washington on Sunday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Installed solar capacity in the United States jumped 37 percent in 2009 as state and federal incentive programs helped prop up demand during a downturn, solar advocates said in a report on Thursday.

COLUMBIA, Missouri (Reuters) – Robert Kremer, a U.S. government microbiologist who studies Midwestern farm soil, has spent two decades analyzing the rich dirt that yields billions of bushels of food each year and helps the United States retain its title as breadbasket of the world.

WASHINGTON/OTTAWA (Reuters) – The United States finalized on Thursday its first greenhouse gas emissions rules on automobiles and boosted fuel efficiency standards, moves Canada is jointly imposing on its industry.

GREENSBORO, North Carolina (Reuters) – Wind-generated electricity is growing rapidly in the United States but the pace still lags far behind that in China, the organizer of an industry conference in North Carolina said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Labor and environmental groups joined with the U.S. government on Thursday to promote high speed Internet access and related technologies to create green jobs and help lift the United States out of recession.

CHICAGO/HAMBURG (Reuters) – Blasts of Arctic winds and drifting snow gripped much of the northern United States and Canada on Thursday, slowing business in the agricultural sector and threatening to disrupt natural gas production.

DALLAS (Reuters) – Voluntary carbon markets in the United States will grow especially at the regional level even if a stalled federal climate bill fails to impose “cap and trade” on American industry, the chairman of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) said.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Norwegian electric car maker Think Global said it plans to build vehicles in the United States in 2011 and has picked a site in Indiana for its U.S. manufacturing facility.