Nine months after the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture was rocked by a magnitude 9.0 quake and an ensuing massive tsunami that plunged it into the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, 25 years earlier, Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, on Friday said in a televised address that the plant’s four afflicted units have been brought to a state of cold shutdown. However, the crisis is far from over, he said.

A report was released last week by the European Commission that outlines possible ways European Union (EU) members can ensure energy security and competitiveness while meeting an ambitious goal of reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 80% to 95% below 1990 levels by 2050.

Duke-American Transmission Co. (DATC) will take charge of the design and development of a proposed 950-mile 500-kV transmission line that would deliver wind energy generated in eastern Wyoming to California and the southwestern U.S.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., December 15, 2011 – The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday gave a big lump of holiday coal to Duke Energy and Progress Energy, putting the colossal Carolina utility merger on hold pending an improved plan to mitigate market power. It isn’t clear whether FERC’s latest skepticism about the merger will […]

A report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last week finds that the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) financial condition could hamper its ability to fund capital improvements—including a 20-year plan to meet power demand with more natural gas generation, three new nuclear reactors, and expanding energy efficiency programs.

Vattenfall last week scrapped a much-awaited €1.5 billion ($2 billion) carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration project it planned to build and begin operating by 2015 in the German federal state of Brandenburg, blaming “insufficient will in German federal politics.”

The UK’s Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and Environment Agency today issued separate interim design approvals for AREVA and EDF’s EPR and Westinghouse’s AP1000 nuclear reactor designs, saying they are satisfied with how the designers of both reactors plan to resolve a number of remaining issues. The decision establishes that the reactors are acceptable for use in the UK, but reactor vendors must first clear remaining issues and take on board lessons learned from the Fukushima accident before being allowed to build new plants in the UK.

A former chairman of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) who was embroiled in an ethics scandal over helping a former agency counsel apply for a job at Duke Energy while participating in proceedings involving the utility’s costly Edwardsport integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant was indicted on Monday by a grand jury in Marion County.

The Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO) on Thursday approved 215 new transmission infrastructure projects as part of the grid operator’s Transmission Expansion Plan 2011 (MTEP11). The projects include 17 transmission line projects that are estimated to cost as much as $5.2 billion to manage a “severe drop in planning reserve margins” that MISO has forecast could occur in the next years if pending environmental regulations proceed as planned.

An agreement reached between LS Power and environmental groups on Monday ends a decade-long legal battle, but it will force the company to ditch plans to build the 1,200-MW coal-fired Longleaf Energy Station near Blakey, Ga.; shelve plans for at least five years to build the 665-MW Plum Point II coal-fired plant near Osceola, Ark.; and limit pollution from the 900-MW pulverized Sandy Creek plant in Riesel, Texas.

Entergy Corp. last week agreed to divest and then merge its electric transmission business with the nation’s largest independent electric transmission company, ITC Holdings Corp. If the merger is completed, and ITC integrates Entergy’s 15,700 miles of interconnected transmission lines, that company could become one of the largest transmission companies in the U.S. with more than 30,000 miles of transmission lines from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast.

Toronto-based Bruce Power on Monday officially abandoned plans to build a new nuclear power plant in Alberta that has been under consideration by the company since 2007, saying it would instead focus investments on increasing reliability and safety at its existing Bruce Power nuclear generating station in Ontario.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last week ruled that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) discriminated against wind generators when it used its transmission market power to curtail wind power after high river flows and high wind last May and June caused generation on the BPA system to exceed power demand.

NRG Energy brought development of a key offshore wind project off the coast of Delaware to a screeching halt on Monday. Saying the development of a new domestic offshore industry was ridden with “monumental challenges,” the Princeton, N.J., company cited its inability to find an investment partner, a lack of federal loan guarantees, and the looming expiration of wind tax incentives as key reasons behind its decision.

By Dan Auld San Diego, December 4, 2011 — Will Rush Limbaugh save the solar industry? It looks that way for Toni Lynch in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Spiro Basho in Hicksville, New York. That’s a hoot, given Limbaugh’s well-known antipathy toward anything remotely resembling renewable energy. Limbaugh has repeatedly taken to the airwaves to slam […]

Rules proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that could require operators of new and existing boilers burning coal, oil, natural gas, and biomass to install a “maximum achievable control technology (MACT)” and limit air pollutants were revised on Friday to offer more flexibility.

Days after the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warned in a new assessment that new federal air quality rules could stress the nation’s power grid, the Department of Energy (DOE) released its own report examining the potential impact of two standards on electricity reliability. Those rules would prompt the closure of 29 GW of coal-fired capacity, but they should not create resource adequacy issues or unmanageable reliability challenges, the DOE finds.

A Texas District Court today dismissed two appeals challenging air quality permits granted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) last December for the 600-MW coal-fired Tenaska Trailblazer Energy Center under development near Sweetwater in Nolan County.

CMS Energy Corp.’s Consumers Energy, which has the oldest fleet of coal plants in the nation, with an average age of 50 years, on Friday said it was immediately abandoning plans to build a $2 billion, 830-MW clean coal plant project near Bay City, Mich., and was planning to suspend operations at seven smaller coal-fired units in 2015.

Texas will be short 2,600 MW during the summer 2012 peak, and reserve margins will dip to 12% owing to decisions to mothball some generation units, several delays in planned generation, and a higher load forecast, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said on Thursday.

A report unveiled on Monday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the future of the smart grid over the next two decades finds that the U.S. grid can stand up to the challenge of integrating electric vehicles as well as new sources of distributed and intermittent power generation—as long as certain policy changes are made.

Last week, as Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) announced he would propose a federal Clean Energy Standard (CES) bill early next year, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released an impact analysis that examines how such a policy would affect the nation’s power profile and carbon emissions.

By Kennedy Maize Washington DC, December 6, 2011—The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has rolled out the latest, and fifth, of its Future Of series of studies of U.S. energy policy, this one focused on the interstate electric transmission grid. The massive transmission tome contains little that’s new to anyone who has followed this subject. Included […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., December 2, 2011 — Think the tension between electric reliability and environmental protection is just theoretical hand-waving? Debra Raggio, assistant general counsel at GenOn Energy, the non-utility generator formerly known as Mirant, will tell you you’re wrong, and she can back it up. Raggio told her tale of regulatory Catch-22 […]

The 75-MW Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center is the first hybrid solar facility in the world to combine a solar thermal array with a combined cycle natural gas power plant. Because the facility uses a steam turbine, transmission lines, and other infrastructure from an existing combined cycle unit, financial savings of approximately 20% were achieved compared to what a similar stand-alone solar plant would have cost.

ICF International, a consultancy group that earlier this year had predicted 68 GW of coal-fired power plants could retire by 2030 as a result of finalized and proposed regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), downgraded its retirement projections to 50 GW this fall.

Germany’s government has decided to shutter all 17 of its nuclear plants (23 reactors); eight plants are now closed for business, six more will be closed by 2021, and the final three will close by 2022. What is lacking is an honest discussion of the rising cost Germans will pay for electricity for what The Economist describes as “the greatest change of political course since unification.”

In December 2009, construction of an underwater tower and fish collection structure was successfully completed at the 465-MW Pelton Round Butte Hydroelectric Project. The first-of-its-kind fish bypass and intake structure returns temperatures in the lower Deschutes River to historic patterns and restores downstream passage of Chinook, steelhead, and sockeye salmon while maintaining existing generating capacity.

Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change.

The world’s biomass power facilities, not counting those in the pulp and paper industry, average just 18 MWe to 20 MWe. In the U.S., passage of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 ignited development of many existing biomass plants. Greenhouse gas rules and renewable policies around the world have kindled a new generation of much larger biomass facilities. New announcements routinely are for plants 50 MW or larger, presumably to leverage economies of scale.