It's that time of year again. Tuesday night at 9pm ET,  President Obama will speak to a joint session of Congress and viewers across the US and around the globe in the annual State of the Union address. And since 2010, Ecopolitology has urged Twitter users to follow and use the #ecoSOTU hashtag for conversation regarding energy, environment and sustainability topics during the State of the Union* (See screengrab above or this facebook photo gallery from 2010 for examples). #ecoSOTU follows from the widely used #SOTU hashtag but promises to be more focused and far less noisy.

Technology willing, we'll embed a real-time stream of the chat and also the White House interactive video in this post so people can watch and follow in one place (see below). Speed and timing are usually important in these types of events so you may find that following along by searching and saving the #ecoSOTU hashtag on twitter.com or your favorite desktop client (e.g. Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, etc.) is a better solution. You probably know the drill.

It is unclear how big of a role issues like energy, environment and climate change will play in the 2012 State of the Union, but given recent events like the decision to deny the Keystone XL oil pipeline as well as the clean energy focus of Obama's first TV ad of 2012 last week, the chances are good.

We are also excited to share the news that Ecopolitology contributor Silvio Marcacci (@Silvio_Marcacci) has been invited to the White House State of the Union Tweetup on Tuesday night so be sure to also follow #WHTweetup for that conversation.

*Note: we also encourage you to use the #ecoSOTU hashtag for conversation on Facebok and Google+, but we imagine the majority of discussion will be taking place on Twitter