By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., September 29, 2011 — A story in the Wall Street Journal recently – about a Chinese wind firm pirating U.S.-owned software that controls wind turbines – reminded me of how, in the 1980s, China stole a coal mine from legendary U.S.-Russian oilman Armand Hammer. The moral of the story, for […]

The renewed flurry of loan guarantees from the DOE this past week included a finalized partial guarantee for a $168.9 million loan to Granite Reliable Power for a 99-MW wind generation project that is expected to become New Hampshire’s largest wind farm.

The Energy Department on Tuesday issued a Record of Decision (ROD) that could allow $450 million of federal funding to be used to help build Summit Texas Clean Eneryg’s 400-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant planned for construction just west of Midland-Odessa,Texas.

Dominion, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Virginia Tech, Alstom Power, and maritime engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol last week received a two-year $500,000 grant from the DOE to seek out ways to reduce the cost of offshore wind generation by at least 25%.

Progress Energy Carolinas will officially shut down its 177-MW coal-fired W.H. Weatherspoon Power Plant near Lumberton, N.C., at the end of the month—the first such retirement under the utility’s fleet-modernization program that includes disassembly of nearly 30% of the firm’s coal generating fleet in North Carolina.

A new standard devised by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in response to the February 2010 Kleen Energy Systems power plant explosion prohibits the use of flammable gas as a cleaning agent for cleaning the interior of pipes—the practice thought to have caused the blast that killed six workers in Middletown, Conn., and injured nearly 50 others.

In a major development, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Office of the Inspector General (IG) today said a key document underpinning the agency’s so-called “endangerment finding”—the determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and legally supports agency rules that regulate carbon dioxide emissions—required a “more rigorous peer review than occurred.”

Just days before the Energy Department’s advanced energy loan guarantee program funded under 2009 stimulus law is set to expire—and amid an investigation of Solyndra, the California-based solar manufacturer that received the Obama administration’s first loan guarantee—the DOE today finalized a $737 million loan guarantee for the development of a 110-MW concentrating solar power tower facility in Nevada.

The DOE on Friday finalized a partial guarantee for up to a $350 million loan guarantee to support a geothermal power project sponsored by Ormat Nevada. The 113-MW project comprises three geothermal power facilities and could increase Nevada’s geothermal power production by nearly 25% the DOE said.

By Steven Aftergood Updated below When the Central Intelligence Agency established a Center on Climate Change and National Security in 2009, it drew fierce opposition from congressional Republicans who disputed the need for an intelligence initiative on this topic.  But now there is a different, and possibly better, reason to doubt the value of the Center:  It […]

There’s lots of reason for optimism about clean technologies, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told a packed crowd on Tuesday afternoon at the RETECH 2011 Keynote Session. New ideas are emerging, costs are coming down and deployment is increasing, she noted—all welcome developments for America’s energy supply and the global environment. The rapid growth of the renewables is partially due to federal policies, but much of the progress has been a "direct result of your creativity and determination."

The installed cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the U.S. plunged 17% in 2010 compared to the year before, and by an additional 11% within the first six months of 2011, a new report from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows.

In a Congressional hearing last week, commissioners from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Public Utility Commissions of several states differed in their views of just how many coal plants could be shut down and how this may affect grid reliability if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implements several rules it has already finalized or proposed.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Thursday said 27 rural electric cooperative utilities would receive $603 million in loans for generation and transmission projects, distribution facilities, and smart grid technologies. The loans are expected to finance rural electric utility improvements in 18 states.

The U.S. House of Representatives could by Friday vote on a measure that could delay the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) implementation of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and the recently proposed utility MACT rule by more than a year.

Just two weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew its smog rule, the agency on Thursday confirmed it would not meet a Sept. 30, 2011, deadline for issuing proposed New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new, modified, and existing power plants. The agency did not specify a new deadline for proposing the rule.

Kansas on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), challenging new regulations that the state says will require utilities to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in new emissions control equipment before Jan. 1, 2012— a timeline the state’s utilities say is impossible to meet

Duke-American Transmission Co. (DATC) is moving ahead with plans to fill gaps in the existing grid first set, unveiling seven new transmission line projects in five Midwestern states last week. These projects will improve electric system reliability and market efficiency, and provide economic benefits to local utilities, Duke’s transmission arm said.

World electricity generation is projected to increase 84% from 19.1 trillion kWh in 2008 to 35.2 trillion kWh in 2035—growth that will be driven by increasing demand in developing countries, the Energy Information Agency’s (EIA’s) recently released International Energy Outlook 2011 shows. Much of this growth will be from renewables and natural gas, though coal generation will also increase in developing countries, and particularly, in China and India.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., September 20, 2011 — Having failed to implement the provisions of the 2005 Energy Policy Act aimed at facilitating interstate electric transmission, the Department of Energy now wants to punt the problem to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Whether FERC wants this political black spot isn’t clear, but in any […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., September 16, 2011 — Add another prominent name to the list of know-nothing, scientifically illiterate skeptics of the conventional wisdom about global warming. Ivar Giaever, co-winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in physics, has resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society over the scientific group’s political position on […]

Pennsylvania has reportedly withdrawn from five federal environmental lawsuits filed during former Gov. Ed Randell’s (D) administration, including four cases the state joined last year supporting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) “endangerment” rule and a 2008 federal suit challenging the EPA’s 2008 smog rules as too lenient.

The Department of Energy (DOE) last week said it was considering transferring to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) its authority to conduct congestion studies and establish a process for designating “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors” (NIETCs). But the move, which has been touted as a means to remove transmission-development barriers, could inhibit new power lines by creating uncertainty, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has countered.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday split 2–2, neither upholding nor rejecting a decision by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) last year that had ruled the Energy Department could not withdraw its license application for the Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear waste repository in Nevada. In a written decision, however, the NRC directed its licensing board to close out work on the project by Sept. 30, citing funding constraints.

New Hampshire’s State Senate last week fell one vote short of overriding Gov. John Lynch’s veto of a bill that would have withdrawn the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program whose participants include 10 states and provinces in the northeastern U.S. and Canada.

Just days after an investigation was launched into failed solar manufacturer Solyndra, a Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee recipient—the DOE announced a flurry of funding measures for new solar, offshore wind, and geothermal projects. The new projects will help achieve President Obama’s goal of generating 80% of U.S. power from clean energy within the next 25 years, the DOE said.

Along with several funding announcements for renewable energy projects, the Department of Energy (DOE) last week said it would back six projects that could lower the cost of producing power in integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants using carbon capture. The $14 million in total funding will seek to improve the economics of IGCC plants and promote the use of the nation’s abundant coal resources, the DOE said.

Shifting from coal to natural gas would have limited impacts on climate—and it could even slightly accelerate global warming at least through 2050—suggests a new study from the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Dallas-based Luminant, Texas’ largest power generator, on Friday filed a legal challenge against the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) but said the newly finalized rule that will require generators to dramatically reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants had forced it to idle two coal-fired units and reduce capacity at three other units. The decision follows talks between the company and the EPA, in which the agency suggested the closures are not the “only path forward.”

A worker was killed and four people were injured at EDF’s Centraco site near the Marcoule nuclear research center in Codolet, Southeast France, on Monday when a furnace dedicated to melting scrap metal from nuclear plants exploded and triggered a fire.