In its last item of business before a new General Assembly took office today, the Illinois Senate rejected—for the second time since last week—a bill that would have procured $3.5 billion from ratepayers for the construction of Tenaska’s Taylorville Energy Center, an integrated gasification combined cycle power (IGCC) plant proposed for central Illinois. The vote puts the future of the controversial coal-fired plant in doubt.

North Carolina–based utilities Duke Energy and Progress Energy agreed to an all stock merger valued at $13.7 billion on Monday. The combined company, to be called Duke Energy, will be the nation’s largest utility. It will have a $65 billion enterprise value, $37 billion in market capitalization, and 57 GW of domestic generating capacity—including the largest regulated nuclear fleet in the country.

The past week saw a spate of nuclear-related news from around the world. Brazil said it would issue approvals for four nuclear plants and a massive hydropower dam in 2011; a Minnesota House committee voted to lift the state’s 20-year ban on new nuclear power; and a Chinese firm that owns the incident-plagued Hong Kong Daya Bay nuclear plant said it would boost operational transparency to quell public concern.

The 130-turbine Cape Wind offshore wind farm proposed for construction on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, Mass., on Friday received two key approvals—from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—completing its federal permitting process.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a Clean Air Act complaint on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) alleging that owners and operators of the 2-GW coal-fired Homer City Generating Station in Homer City, Indiana County, Pa., violated New Source Review (NSR) requirements.

South Korean utility GS Electric Power and Services Co. is Siemens Energy’s newest customer for the German firm’s new high-efficiency H-Class gas turbine. Siemens said today that it would supply—for the first time—a complete combined cycle power plant equipped with the new-generation gas turbine.

Virginia’s State Corporation Commission on Monday denied a request by Allegheny Energy and American Electric Power to delay regulatory proceedings for a proposed 765-kilovolt, 275-mile transmission project from Putnam County, W.Va., to Frederick County, Md.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., January 11, 2011 — The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this week engaged in a spitting match with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. FERC won. At issue is the commission’s Dec. 16 order sorting out the incredibly complex issue of how to connect remote renewable generation into the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last week said it had published its final Safety Evaluation Report (SER) for the Mixed-Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at Savannah River.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last month approved Constellation Energy’s $1.1 billion acquisition of BostonGen’s five power plants in the Boston area, which have a combined capacity of 2,950 MW. The approval marks closing of the sale of the third-largest generating portfolio in the New England region.

As regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to curb greenhouse gases from power plants and other large stationary sources took effect for the first time this week, a federal appeals court temporarily stayed the federal agency’s plan to seize control of greenhouse gas permits from Texas.

Ormat Technologies last week said it would not proceed with Part II of a loan guarantee application for three geothermal projects in California and Nevada, shunning the opportunity for up to $330 million in federal funds. The Reno-based company said it had instead decided to “explore” commercial financing, citing uncertainties in the project permitting process and transaction costs associated with the program.

The German state governing council of Hesse last week partially approved a 1.1-GW coal-fired power plant proposed for construction by Germany firm E.ON at its Staudinger site. If E.ON receives clearance for actual operation of the plant, the plant will be the sixth block at the site, replacing three older units built in the 1960s and 1970s.

A novel technology that could help release some currently unusable energy in an estimated 2 billion tons of coal waste in the U.S. has been demonstrated by a Department of Energy–supported project, the federal body said on Tuesday.

Although it doesn’t get much attention, the world’s first and largest source of renewable electricity, water power, is still a major player on the world stage. Though viewed as politically incorrect by some folks, mostly in the developed world, and despite its well-known environmental impacts, using water to turn turbines to generate electricity represents an attractive way to generate electricity with no fuel costs, even in the U.S. Here’s what’s being talked about in the U.S., India, Turkey, Nigeria, and China.

Whatever happened to the venerable military institution of KP? It’s been outsourced, along with a lot of other tasks in the work environment. Outsourcing often makes sense, but it isn’t a panacea.

Despite high-powered congressional legislation in 2005, the U.S. is still unable to site high-voltage interstate transmission lines in a timely fashion. Two new reports suggest ways out of the gridlock.

Uranium remains plentiful around the world, says a new resource study from MIT, obviating the need to "close" the nuclear fuel cycle by reprocessing and developing breeder reactors.

Given cloud computing’s potential to lower operating costs and increase flexibility, it’s no wonder that it is on the cusp of sending the corporate world into a paradigm shift.

The process of banking allowances under the existing schemes for creating markets for pollution reductions has created a set of difficult problems as those programs have changed, wiping out significant value from the allowances.

As mergers and acquisitions in the power sector heat up again, questions arise about how employee benefits are affected by these complex business deals.

A million possibilities and distractions are in the business environment. Tom Hall and Wally Bock, authors of the new book Ruthless Focus, say the companies that win in the long term are the ones that can drown out the background noise and keep dancing with the strategy that brought them to the party.

With climate legislation dead in the U.S., it is worthwhile to take a look at how discussions of energy and environmental policy ebb and flow in the country, generally without reaching serious resolution.

A key challenge for new leaders is to make a transition from actually doing the work to making sure that the work gets done. That takes a mind shift.

Researchers at Germany’s Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) claim to have developed a small-scale hydroelectric power plant that is capable of operating profitably even at modest dam heights while minimizing impact on waterways.

In November, California voters overwhelmingly rejected an initiative that would have put the brakes on AB 32, the state’s ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction law. Given the role that California has played in climate change policy, that such a vote took place only four years into the law’s implementation process and 10 years before the emissions reduction targets were to be met was a reality check on climate change policy for those on both sides of the issue.

Dr. Michael Weinhold, chief technology officer of Siemens Energy, discusses the company’s 2011 business plans and the role of the smart grid in the future’s energy infrastructure.

If Hollywood were scripting the power industry story for 2011, it would be a sequel to 2010—more of the same, but just not quite as good. Natural gas gets top billing and the accolades, wind power drops to a supporting role, and new nuclear answers the casting call but has yet to get a speaking part. Coal is like Mel Gibson—a talented Oscar winner unlikely to get another leading role. In this, our fifth annual industry forecast report, the story may be familiar, but the price of admission is going way up.

For more than a decade Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group Inc. and Air Liquide have been developing oxyfuel technology with the goal of using it to concentrate CO₂ from pulverized coal-fired power plants and achieve up to 90% CO₂ capture and storage. This technology was recently selected for demonstration as part of FutureGen 2.0.

The new Oil Eater all-in-one professional grade emergency spill kits are designed to contain and clean up hazardous spills as required by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Each kit contains absorbent pads, pillows, universal snakes, booms, protective gloves, oil-resistant and high-temperature disposal bags, and an emergency response instruction […]