The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the beginning of a new "high-speed robotic screening system" to evaluate the potential human toxicity of 10,000 different compounds on December 7, 2011.  The new screening system, known as "Tox21," is part of a collaboration between NIH, US EPA, and the US Food and Drug Administration.  The vast array of compounds to be screened under the new Tox21 program are found in consumer products, food additives, industrial process chemicals, and human and veterinary drugs, and include some formulations and mixtures of various compounds. 

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A Clean Energy Standard (CES) is a policy that requires covered electricity retailers to supply a specified share of their electricity sales from qualifying clean energy resources.  Under a CES, electric generators would be granted clean energy credits for every megawatthour (MWh) of electricity they produce using qualifying energy sources.  Utilities serving retail customers would use some combination of credits granted to their own generation or credits acquired in trade from other generators to meet CES obligations.  Generators without retail customers or utilities that generate more clean energy credits than needed to cover their own obligations could sell CES credits to other companies.  Currently, there is no comprehensive federal statute setting a CES.  Some states have set their own CES, while others lag behind or are considering legislation to repeal their state CES. 

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The U.S. Government Accountability Office ("GAO") recently released a report entitled Green Building: Federal Initiatives for the Nonfederal Sector Could Benefit from More Interagency Collaboration.  This report found 94 federal initiatives that foster "green building" in the nonfederal sector, meaning private, state, local, or tribal entities, which were being implemented by 11 agencies, including  18 initiatives by U.S. EPA as listed in the report.  Green building initiatives were partly seen as a way to jumpstart economic growth during the great recession.  

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For a number of years, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE), through its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), have been in a partnership to evaluate the development of renewable energy on potentially contaminated sites.  They call it the "RE-Powering America's Land Initiative."  Through this partnership, EPA and NREL are evaluating the feasibility of developing renewable energy production on Superfund, brownfields, and former landfill or mining sites. EPA is investing approximately $1 million for projects across the United States aiming to revitalize abandoned sites while protecting people's health, the environment and providing economic benefits to local communities.

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Some states prohibit indemnity clauses in construction contracts that attempt to absolve a contractor for its own negligence. 

In 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court struck down a limitation of liability clause under Georgia's anti-indemnity statute in Lanier at McEver, L.P. v. Planners and Engineers Collaborative, Inc.¸ 663 S.E.2d 240 (Ga. 2008).  The facts were that a developer retained an engineering firm and paid it $81,514 to design a storm-water drainage system for a 220-unit apartment complex. 

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