The Obama administration unveiled a plan to boost fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks to an average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016—four years ahead of current schedule and up from an average of just 25 miles per gallon today.

The new standards (pdf) will also impose—for the first time ever—a limit on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles at 250 grams per mile in 2016 under the new proposed rule. (That’s about 5.5 ounces per kilometer, for those of you who like your units mixed differently.)

There are very few vehicles capable of meeting the new standards today, which would mean more hybrids and possibly even electric or other alternative vehicles would have to hit the road within seven years for automakers to comply.

You could get some green if you go green: President Obama is touting legislation that would pay drivers to turn in their gas-guzzling, exhaust-emitting cars for fuel-efficient vehicles.

So-called “cash for clunker” bills moving through the House and Senate would provide vouchers of $2,000 to $5,000 – depending on the age of the clunker, the fuel efficiency of the new car and where it was made – to buyers of greener automobiles. The old car parts would then be recycled. An incentive program in Germany that offered $3,290 to consumers who traded in their old cars hiked auto sales by more than 21 percent last month over the previous February, according to Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH), who is sponsoring legislation on the issue.

California this week sued the feds to block a new Bush administration rule from taking effect that would relax portions of the Endangered Species Act.

The rule, finalized December 16, permits the Commerce and Interior departments to sign off on new projects that may threaten wildlife and their habitat without input from independent scientists that is now required. The new measure, set to take effect hours before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn into office Jan. 20, also allows regulators to ignore the effects on wildlife of potential greenhouse-gas emissions from those projects.

"The Bush administration is seeking to gut the Endangered Species Act on its way out the door," California Attorney General Jerry Brown said in a statement after the state filed the lawsuit Monday in Northern California Federal District Court in Oakland.

Despite a slowing global economy, carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise in 2007, according to energy use figures from oil company BP—jumping to 8.47 billion metric tons of the most common greenhouse gas responsible for global warming or 2.9 percent higher than the last year's total. Leading the charge: the U.S. (up nearly 2 percent to 1.58 billion metric tons) and China (up more than 7 percent to 1.8 billion metric tons).

These figures outpace even the worst-case projections of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned last year that unless pollution is reduced, global average temperatures could rise by between four and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (two to six degrees Celsius).

The U.S. produces half its electricity from burning coal—and pumps out more than 40 percent of its carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in the process. Vattenfall—the enormous Swedish electric company—has a similar problem, though it sources most of its electricity in that Nordic country from dams and nuclear power plants.

The company also owns a slew of dirty, old coal-fired power plants in the former East Germany. These plants burn the dirtiest form of coal, lignite (a.k.a. brown coal), which is soft because it’s still damp and produces much more polluting soot when burned.

With the onset of a new CO₂ emissions trading scheme in the European Union, Vattenfall decided to build a demonstration project at its lignite-burning power plant in Schwarze Pumpe. The technology is called oxyfuel, and it basically relies on burning coal in pure oxygen and CO₂ rather than normal air.