Clean Start: September 30, 2011

Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

Hurricane Ophelia is strengthening as it moves toward north-northwest, after becoming the fourth hurricane in the busy Atlantic season, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. [Reuters]

Royal Dutch Shell was confronted Thursday with a fresh challenge to its plan to drill for oil off Alaska’s coast, with several environmental groups filing a lawsuit to block the company’s exploration plans in the Beaufort Sea. [WSJ]

A tropical storm barreled toward Vietnam Friday, forcing 20,000 people to be evacuated, as the Philippines braced for a new typhoon and several Asian countries reeled under floods after some of the wildest weather this summer. [AP]

An expected temperature rise of more than two degrees Celsius by 2050 will render many of West Africa’s cocoa-producing areas too hot for the plants that bear the fruit from which chocolate is made, says a new study from the Colombia-based International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). [AlertNet]

From rare earth-free magnets for electric cars to heat-storing materials to generate electricity, 60 projects will receive a total of $156 million from a federal program that funds innovative energy research, the U.S. Department of Energy announced Thursday. [Forbes]

The U.S. Coast Guard said the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig may be the source of an oily sheen on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. [Bloomberg]

More than 7,000 properties in Binghamton, NY were damaged by historic flooding early this month, and dozens more were destroyed. [Gannett]

Flood watches remain in effect for much of flood-weary eastern Pennsylvania, where rising waters had some people fearing for their homes for a fourth time in a month. [AP]

A federal freeze on money for some forms of disaster relief has clouded prospects for a $7.8 million buyout plan that nearly 60 flood-weary homeowners along Des Moines’ Four Mile Creek are counting on. [Des Moines Register]

A surge in mining damage to waterways, houses and roads has sparked a fierce debate in southwestern Pennsylvania’s coal region about whether regulations are strong enough to protect property and natural resources. [E&E News]