The American Wind Energy Association’s number one priority is renewal of the production tax credit in order to protect industry jobs. But wind isn’t the only industry sector that’s scrambling to protect jobs.

PPL Montana plans to mothball its 154-MW coal-fired J.E. Corette power plant in Billings, Mont., starting in April 2015. The company cited "effects of pending Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] regulations combined with economic factors," as reasons for its decision.

About 1,792 MW of existing generation in the New York bulk power system is expected to retire or be mothballed over the next decade, and if demand heightens as has been forecast by 2020, the state’s grid could see a 1,000-MW generation gap, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) warned in its recently released 2012 Reliability Needs Assessment (RNA).

Progress Energy last week shuttered its 382-MW coal-fired H.F. Lee power plant near Goldsboro, N.C. The 1951-built station is the second to be retired under the Duke Energy subsidiary’s fleet modernization program.

RWE npower, the German energy company’s UK arm, on Tuesday said it would shutter its coal-fired 2,000-MW Didcot A Power Station in Oxfordshire and the 1,000-MW oil-fired Fawley Power Station in Hampshire at the end of March 2013 under the European Union’s (EU’s) Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD).

Japan’s Cabinet on Wednesday refrained from endorsing a much-awaited, controversial recommendation made just days before by an advisory panel urging Japan to seek to close all its viable nuclear reactors by 2040 and increase its reliance on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and fossil fuels.

Spent nuclear fuel stored onsite at commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S. will increase by about 2,000 metric tons per year and balloon to more than 140,000 metric tons by 2055, before it can be moved offsite when storage or disposal facilities are expected to have been developed, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a recently released report.

More than 300 state and national public interest groups on Friday asked U.S. senators to oppose a bill introduced in August by Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Max Baucus (D- Mont.) that they say will fail to protect public health and the environment because it encourages "unsafe dumping of toxic coal ash."

One of the best ways California would be able to endure another summer without power from Southern California Edison’s (SCE’s) San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station would be to convert the Huntington Beach Units 3 and 4 into synchronous condensers, allowing them to act somewhat like spinning flywheels to adjust grid conditions, experts from the California Independent System Operator Corp. (CAISO) told its Board of Governors at a meeting last week.

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has agreed to pay $6.4 million to the U.S. Forest Service to settle claims related to one of the largest wildfires in California history. The utility has already paid more than $1 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits after state investigations concluded that the company’s high-voltage power lines produced electrical arcing and ignited the 2007 Witch Creek Fire that ravaged 198,000 acres near Santa Ysabel in San Diego County, Calif.

Making sense out of the NERC cyber security rules is inherently difficult; the ever-changing regulatory scene makes it even harder. With Version 4 now in hand, Version 5 is on the way.

Facing increasing competition and a slumping economy, China is moving to strengthen its already robust monopoly over rare earth minerals vital to many advanced energy technologies.

Firing a worker is not an easy task, something no conscientious manager takes lightly. And the decision can come back to bite. But it is sometimes necessary and there are ways to do the job that minimize the risks to the organization.

The recent London Olympics were not just a triumph of athletics. They also showed how solid project management can bring an enormously challenging job to a successful conclusion, putting on one of the most successful Olympic Games ever.

After a slowdown in the first half of 2012, merger activity in the power sector may be heating up again. One surprising target given the current environment: Coal.

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Wednesday announced its SunShot Prize, a new competition to make it faster, easier, and cheaper to install rooftop solar energy systems. A total of $10 million in cash awards are available to the first three teams that repeatedly demonstrate the non-hardware costs, or price to plug in, can be as low as $1 per watt for small-scale photovoltaic (PV) systems on American homes and businesses.

The title of world’s largest operating solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant goes to Arizona. On Monday, First Solar Inc. announced that the Agua Caliente solar project has achieved a peak generating capacity of 250 MW connected to the electrical grid. The project, under construction in Yuma County, will have a total capacity of 290 MW when completed.

In testimony before a congressional subcommittee, Joseph McClelland, director of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Office of Electric Reliability, enumerated the ways in which the U.S. regulatory system is ill-equipped to deal with time-sensitive threats to physical and cyber assets of its power system.

The Canadian province of Quebec’s newly elected Parti Quebecois government announced on Tuesday that it has decided to shutter the province’s 30-year-old Gentilly-2 nuclear plant.

By Kennedy Maize (@kennedymaize) Washington, D.C., 9 September 2012 — If you are looking for direction on what energy policy and politics in the U.S. might look like after the November election, don’t expect much guidance from the two party platforms. Nor have the contenders had much of substance to say on the topic. Given […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Thursday directed its staff to develop an environmental impact statement (EIS) and a revised waste confidence decision and rule on the temporary storage of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Last week’s decision was in response to a June 8 federal court ruling, which said the NRC had erred in deciding that SNF from the nation’s power plants could be stored as long as 60 years after a plant’s operating license expires.

Congress has returned from its summer break. As the House prepares to vote on its Upton-Stearns "No More Solyndras Act," lawmakers also expect to focus on a bill that could prohibit finalization of any Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) power plant rules that curb greenhouse gas emissions while carbon capture and storage technology is commercially unavailable. House Democrats, meanwhile, called for hearings to examine the impacts of climate change on the nation’s generators.

Residents of Cuba’s capital Havana and millions of others living in an area stretching 450 miles from the nation’s southeastern province of Camaguey to the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio experienced a massive blackout on Sunday night caused by an "interruption" in a 220-kV transmission line, the government said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) last week said it had reached its $250 million goal to finance smart grid technologies. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also announced nine rural electric cooperatives and utilities in 10 states would receive loan guarantees to make improvements to generation and transmission facilities and implement smart grid technologies.

Final regulations that seek to tamp down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new and end-of-life coal-fired power plants announced by Canada’s federal government on Wednesday, and which will become effective on July 1, 2015, apply a more relaxed performance standard than proposed in the draft rule.