As chief executives of 34 renewable energy companies urged congressional Republican and Democratic leaders to support the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, a study released by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) suggests grants are a simpler and more effective way to help finance projects than tax credits.

With geothermal power being produced in nine states—and with 123 projects across 15 states under development—the U.S. leads the world in geothermal energy production, a new report from the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) shows.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) on Thursday said they had begun a process to offer Bluewater Wind Delaware the first commercial wind lease off the coast of Delaware under the “Smart from the Start” Atlantic Offshore Wind program.

California’s Assembly on Tuesday passed a renewable energy mandate that would require the state’s power companies to generate 33%—up from the current 20%—of their power from renewable sources by 2020. The mandate is the most ambitious in the U.S.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last week completed a Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS) for a limited work authorization (LWA) and the combined construction and operating licenses (COLs) for Southern Co.’s Vogtle Units 3 and 4 proposed for construction near Waynesboro, Ga.

Incidents unfolding at the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan has led governments to take extraordinary safety measures around the world. Last week, European Union (EU) ministers agreed to re-check the safety of Europe’s 143 reactors, and in the U.S., regulators are expected to conduct seismic assessments on 27 reactors at 17 plants.

Sept. 30, 2011, is the revised final deadline for reporting 2010 data under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reporting Program. The agency also last week delayed the release of proposed rules that would govern cooling water intake systems at nuclear and coal plants until March 28.

A week after a U.S. House committee passed a bill sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) in the House and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) in the Senate, Sens. Inhofe and Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) introduced a bill that would require an interagency federal panel to undertake a “cumulative economic analysis” of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday said the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) would hold four competitive lease sales from May through August for Powder River Basin coal tracts in Wyoming. The tracts, covering 7,441.25 acres, hold an estimated 758 million tons of low-sulfur coal.

AC power is now available at Units 1, 2, and 4 of the six-reactor quake- and tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, according to recent updates; however, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) still believes “the overall situation remains of serious concern.”

Georgia Power last week said it would seek the Georgia Public Service Commission’s approval to decertify two coal-generating units totaling 569 MW. The decision was based on “a need to install environmental controls to meet a variety of existing and expected environmental regulations,” the company said.

Sempra Generation last week officially dedicated the 48-MW Copper Mountain Solar facility, a project located adjacent to the company’s 10-MW El Dorado Solar installation in Boulder City, Nev., about 40 miles southeast of Las Vegas. Sempra is calling the facility “the largest photovoltaic solar plant in the U.S.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed what it described as the “first-ever” national standards for “toxic air pollution” from power plants. The new rules—which will replace the court-vacated Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR)—will require new and existing coal- and oil-fired plants to install pollution control technologies to curb emissions of mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel, and acid gases.

A federal judge in Birmingham, Ala., on Monday dismissed all claims in an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lawsuit that alleged Southern Co. subsidiary Alabama Power built or made modifications to existing coal-fired power plants in Alabama that were in violation of New Source Review (NSR) regulations under Prevention of Significant Deterioration provisions of the Clean Air Act.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) yesterday established a new rule that puts demand response (DR) on a par with power generation. The rule requires organized wholesale energy market operators to pay DR resources the market price for energy, known as the locational marginal price (LMP), when those resources have the capability to balance supply and demand as an alternative to a generation resource and when dispatch of those resources is cost-effective.

Xcel Energy wants to retire its last two coal-fired power plants (Units 3 and 4) at the Black Dog power plant in Burnsville, Minn., and replace them with natural gas–fired units. Black Dog Units 1 and 2 were converted to natural gas combined-cycle operation in 2002. Xcel says the conversion would be “more economical” than alternatives.

New York City and six states have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide on whether state and local governments have the right to sue private power companies under a common-law tort of public nuisance for their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The specter of meltdown and widespread radiation grows ever-more terrifying at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (TEPCO’s) Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture. Soon after a devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake shook northeastern Japan on Friday, March 11, at 2:48 p.m. JST, the government declared an emergency as a precaution. Events have dramatically escalated since then, with four explosions and two fires afflicting four of the plant’s six reactors.

As U.S. lawmakers and energy experts urged federal regulators to delay decisions on reactor designs and new builds, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Gregory Jaczko said there was no need for concern about U.S. nuclear power. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday astonished the opposition and suspended an unpopular coalition decision made last fall to extend the lives of Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants. Merkel also ordered seven nuclear plants that began operating before 1980 to shut down until at least June. Switzerland took similar measures.

A new survey from Microsoft Corp. released at the CERAWeek 2011 conference in Houston, Texas, last week suggests that only 8% of utilities are progressing past smart grid planning into implementation. The survey also suggests that generally, budgets to support smart grid efforts are on the rise.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., March 14, 2011, 10:05 a.m. – Only France has been more resolute about relying on nuclear power than Japan. The reasons for both countries’ nuclear energy policies are generally the same: neither possesses much in the way of domestic energy resources. So nuclear power – including breeder reactors and a […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., March 12, 2011, 10:30 a.m. EST – For those who covered both the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear disasters, there is an eerie symmetry with what is happening in Japan. In the prior cases – much different from each other and, most likely, very different from what is happening […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., March 11, 2011 – At this writing, 7:45 p.m. EST, it is hard to be optimistic about what is happening at Japan’s Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant. Matt Wald of the New York Times reports, based on Japanese accounts, that radiation levels in the control room are “1,000 times above […]

A Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) proposed on Monday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asks three Oklahoma coal-fired power plant operators to install technology or switch to natural gas to control air emissions. The agency said the plants, built more than 30 years ago, did not meet regional haze requirements under the Clean Air Act.

License applications for Dominion’s proposed North Anna reactor in Virginia and Luminant’s two proposed reactors at Comanche Peak, in Texas—the two U.S. facilities that have chosen Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ (MHI’s) Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor (APWR)—will be delayed by more than 18 months. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said structural changes made by MHI to its reactor design require a lengthened review time.

Alberta-based TransAlta and Washington State’s Gov. Chris Gregoire over the weekend reached an agreement to shut down the last coal-fired power plant in the Pacific Northwest. The first boiler of the company’s 1,460-MW plant in Centralia, Wash., will be closed in 2020 and the second in 2025.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), the body representing the interests of state public utility commissions before the federal government, on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Energy (DOE) for not suspending fees associated with the now-defunct Yucca Mountain nuclear spent-fuel repository.

Of the 104 nuclear reactors operating in the U.S., 89 made the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) highest performance category last year, said the federal body on Tuesday.

Committees in Minnesota’s House and Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed matching bills that lift a four-year-old state law banning new coal-fired power plants of 50 MW or more. If the bills become law, they could also allow utilities in that state to import power from coal plants outside the state.

An audit of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) loan guarantee program for clean energy technologies completed last week by the agency’s inspector general found that the program could not always “readily demonstrate, through systematically organized records, including contemporaneous notes, how it resolved or mitigated relevant risks prior to granting loan guarantees.”