Hydraulic fracturing has contaminated some drinking water sources, but the damage is not widespread, according to a landmark U.S. study of water pollution risks that has supporters of the drilling method declaring victory and foes saying it revealed reason for concern.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's annual energy outlook - which was released earlier this spring - anticipated that the industrial sector's energy demand would outpace all other sectors through 2040, and a just-released EIA report projected that bulk chemicals would account for a "large portion of both consumption and anticipated growth," with the value of chemical shipments increasing from $288bn in 2013 to $429bn in 2025.

Although gas prices are temporarily low at the pump, long-term energy costs are on the rise. According to State of the World 2015 contributing author Nathan John Hagens, a former hedge fund manager who teaches human macro-ecology at the University of Minnesota, nations are papering over those costs with debt. Higher energy costs are leading to continued recessions, excess claims on future natural resources, and more-severe social inequality and poverty.

In 2014, renewable energy accounted for 9.8 percent of total domestic energy consumption. This marks the highest renewable energy share since the 1930s, when wood was a much larger contributor to domestic energy supply.

The transportation sector is moving away from oil slowly but surely. Driven by growth in the use of biofuels and natural gas, non-petroleum energy now makes up the highest percentage of total fuel consumption for transport since 1954, according to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The U.S. plastics industry is expected to grow rapidly over the next decade, fueled by cheap and abundant shale natural gas that's made it more competitive with overseas markets, according to a report by economists at the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

Shifting from diesel fuel to natural gas to power the nation's heavy-duty commercial trucking sector would achieve widely promised climate benefits only if widespread emissions of heat-trapping methane across the natural gas value chain are reduced, according to a new study coauthored by researchers from Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.