Enron executive agrees to plea deal
Washington: Richard A Causey, Enron Corp's former chief accountant has agreed to plead guilty to criminal conduct that preceded the energy giant's collapse into bankruptcy.

This would give prosecutors another key witness against former chief executives Kenneth L Lay and Jeffrey K Skilling.

Causey who is facing more than two-dozen criminal charges, is scheduled to appear in a Houston courtroom today. Causey, Skilling and Lay had been scheduled to face trial on Jan. 17 and the trio had presented a united front. But at the eleventh hour negotiations with the Justice department's Enron task force and the prospect of spending decades behind bars seems to have led him to enter the plea deal.

Lay and Skilling are charged with leading a conspiracy to defraud investors by hiding debt and inflating profits at Enron before its December 2001 collapse. The company was forced to cut thousands of jobs after its December 2001 bankruptcy and cost shareholders more than $85 billion in losses.
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China increases focus on renewable energy
Beijing: China plans to invest $2.47 billion over the next five years on development of new power plants across the country.

State-owned China Energy Conservation Investment Corporation (CECIC), the leading firm for alternative energy development, will build new plants that will generate electricity from wind, biomass and garbage treatment.

The company will fund one third of the projects through internal sources with the rest financed by bank loans or other sources such as absorbing new strategic investors senior officials said.

Under the new energy law, the grid companies can charge higher prices for electricity generated by renewable energies than the coal-fired plants.

In the company's medium-term investment blueprint, as many as 30 new biomass-fuelled power plants, each with an investment of $39 million, have been designed in the country's major agricultural provinces such as Hebei, Henan, Heilongjiang and Sichuan.

These plants will use six million tonnes a year of biomass to generate power, reducing emissions of carbon dioxide by 8.8 million tonnes a year.
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