Clean Start: March 9, 2012

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?

Australia’s flood crisis was set to cost in excess of $530 million in New South Wales alone and more rain was on the way, the state government said Friday. [AFP}

Developing countries with an insatiable thirst for electricity are going full speed ahead with new reactors a year after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster disrupted the growth of nuclear power around the world. [WSJ]

Federal efforts to expand oversight of oil and gas drilling are threatening to derail development of U.S. energy without necessarily improving safety, Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson said Thursday. [WSJ]

The National Weather Service has reissued a flash flood warning for Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Oahu and Kauai. [KHON]

Japanese Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano plans to ease regulations governing the construction of solar-power plants, Kyodo News reported. [Bloomberg]

A wildfire burning on both sides of the Tennessee-Georgia state line west of Chattanooga has kept firefighters busy. [AP]

Fewer solar panels will be installed this year as the first drop in more than a decade worsens a glut of the unsold devices that’s already slashed margins at the top five manufacturers, an analyst survey showed. [Bloomberg]

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Thursday in favor of returning 80 percent of the fines to be collected from BP for the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill to the five states whose waters, wildlife and ecosystems were damaged by the flow of 5 million barrels of oil: Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas. [McClatchy]

As BP and others involved in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill negotiate possible settlements ahead of a now-delayed trial, billions of dollars in fines and damages could ride on the legal issue of whether BP and other companies acted with gross negligence. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Springtime in Concord, Mass., comes over a week earlier because of global warming since the town was home to Henry David Thoreau, and the writer himself has helped scientists figure out how. [Live Science]