Clean Start: November 7, 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?

Deliberations in Nebraska may play a decisive role on the proposed pipeline to carry crude oil from the tar sands of Canada to refineries in Texas. [NPR]

Australia’s Senate is set to pass laws on Tuesday putting a national price on carbon emissions, one of the country’s most sweeping and divisive economic reforms that have been a decade in the making. [Reuters]

In China, 195 solar power projects, with a total capacity of over 1.8 GW, will be installed within 2011, bringing the installed capacity in China to match the installed capacity in the US this year. [SolarBuzz]

The mayor of Naples ordered a much-awaited soccer match scrapped Sunday for fear tens of thousands of fans could be trapped by flooding, while in northern Italy authorities closely monitored the rain-swollen Po river, as the region has been pummeled by heavy rains and flooding over the last two weeks. [AP]

Advancing pools of filthy water threatened the Thai capital’s subway system Monday and surrounded the emergency headquarters set up to deal with flooding that has claimed more than 500 lives nationwide. [AP]

Floodwater encircled two industrial estates in the east of Bangkok on Monday and closed in on the center of the capital, disrupting bus services, although mass transit train systems were still running and commercial districts remained dry. [Reuters]

Some 200 homes in Waterbury were severely damaged or destroyed, representing nearly a third of all the Vermont homes damaged by Irene-related flooding. [USA Today]

Irene so far has cost FEMA more than $151 million in aid to individual New Jerseyans, making it the most expensive storm in the state’s history, agency spokesman Ed Edahl said. [Star-Ledger]

A European Union plan to charge airlines for their carbon emissions has made unlikely allies of China and the United States in a trade dispute which underlines a failure in climate leadership by the world’s top two emitters. [Reuters]

The Prince of Wales met with fellow climate action cheerleader Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu yesterday for a Eucharist at Cape Town’s cathedral. [Telegraph]

European Union nations must nearly double investment in power grid building in the decade after 2020 if it is to get on the path to carbon-free electricity by the middle of the century, think-tank the European Climate Foundation (ECF) said on Monday. [Reuters]