By Kennedy Maize I’ve been reading a lot lately about “geoengineering,” aka “climate engineering,” as a way to deal with global warming, instead of a cumbersome, bureaucratic international command-and-control regime, or a cap-and-trade mechanism. This is intriguing. I suspect this engineering approach is another policy dead end, but it is worth contemplating and discussing. Ultimately, […]

Dynegy on Monday said it would sell eight power plants to LS Power, a private equity firm that is a major stakeholder in the Houston-based generation firm. The transaction, estimated at $1.5 billion in cash and stock, is expected to enhance Dynegy’s "strategic and financial flexibility."

Montana last week revoked an air quality permit needed by the Southern Montana Electric (SME) Generation and Transmission Cooperative to build a 250-MW coal-fired power plant east of Great Falls, Mont. The decision was reportedly made at SME’s request.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is now looking to build a single reactor at the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant site in Hollywood, Ala., instead of the four reactors for which it had anticipated regulatory approval.

Duke Energy and the China Huaneng Group—among the largest utilities in the U.S. and China—on Monday signed an agreement to discuss and share information to explore a variety of clean energy technologies, especially those that pertain to cleaner coal.

A FirstEnergy Corp. subsidiary has signed an official agreement with federal entities to repower two units at the R.E. Burger coal plant near Shadyside, Ohio, with biomass fuel—making it the largest coal-fired plant in the nation to do so—the U.S. Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Tuesday.

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels dropped 3.2% in 2008 and are projected to fall a further 5% this year, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Emissions from coal will account for more than a half of this decline.

The UK should look to supply some 35% to 40% of its electricity needs with nuclear energy by 2030 to ensure energy security and cut carbon emissions, finds a recently released report that had been commissioned by the government.

By Kennedy Maize When Congress comes back to D.C. after Labor Day, it will face important strategic decisions, as will the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership. In particular, they will face the decision whether to focus on health care legislation or energy policy. I’m betting heavily on health care. I suspect that the administration’s […]

To meet future demand as well as carbon constraints, the U.S. power industry should by 2030 build 45 new nuclear reactors, increase renewable generation four-fold, decrease electricity consumption 8% through improved end-use efficiency, and deploy 100 million plug-in electric vehicles, according to an updated “Prism and Merge” analyses from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

A new analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) finds that the most carbon dioxide reductions will occur in the electric power sector, mainly through the reduction in use of coal power. But it also finds that compliance with emissions caps that is generated through offsets could exceed actual reductions in covered emissions, and that the average electric customer could face a 20% price hike by 2030.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced last week that it would make available an additional $30 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy projects. At the same time, it pledged another $750 million in subsidy costs to support projects that increase the reliability, efficiency, and security of the national grid.

Italy’s Enel and Electricité de France (EDF) on Monday sealed a €16 billion deal to jointly develop feasibility studies for the construction of at least four advanced third-generation EPR units in Italy—a country that recently reversed a 21-year-old ban on nuclear power.

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) is reportedly negotiating an energy project with Hydro Quebec and other Canadian entities that could allow the state-owned power organization to import up to 2,000 MW of power from multiple sources, including hydropower, from Canada.

Chinese officials claim that the country is 18 months ahead of schedule in its goal to close 50 million kilowatts of coal-fired generating capacity by the end of 2010. They say the country has so far shut down small coal-fired plants with a total generating capacity of 54.07 GW from 2006 to the end of June this year—about 7% of the nation’s current generating capacity.

How many times have you heard it said: “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we (you fill in the blank)?” On July 20 we commemorated the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong taking mankind’s first step on the moon and adding this unique point of comparison to our society’s lexicon. The only problem is that the analogy no longer is useful in today’s risk-adverse, technology-driven society.

The New Source Review (NSR) permitting program was originally created as part of the 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments to ensure that new power generation facilities were properly outfitted with all the necessary air quality control systems when constructed. Plants in operation were exempt until they made plant modifications viewed as beyond “routine maintenance,” a term whose definition has been a moving target. Is it time for the NSR to take a back seat to improved plant efficiency and reduced carbon emissions?

Reducing dust from coal conveyors has moved from a housekeeping chore to a safety challenge, especially with Powder River Basin coals. Here’s what you need to know about the latest coal-handling system design.

The EPA has identified 44 "high hazard" coal ash ponds around the U.S., and a recent Tennessee Valley Authority report indicates that the agency should have known its Kingston Plant pond would have been one of them.

An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded that two-thirds of the value of carbon emission allowances described by the recent H.R. 2545 will benefit utility business customers and households in the top quartile of personal income. The middle quintile will see increased cost for electricity.

MIT researchers push for faster commercialization of carbon capture technologies for coal-fired power plants by reducing system costs.

By J. Wayne Leonard
A policy of allocating free allowances to hold down electric price increases, as some in our industry are advocating as part of climate change legislation, is well-intended but not the best choice for a cap-and-trade plan. An "auction and recycle" plan accomplishes the same goals yet is more consumer friendly.

By Dr. Richard W. Goodwin, PE
Of the 131 million tons of U.S. power plant waste or coal combustion by-products (CCBs), 36% are disposed of in landfills and 21% are disposed of in surface impoundments. Recent problems with surface impoundments and landfills have created a media furor and have prompted elected and appointed officials to demand more stringent regulatory control.

The annual meeting of the Powder River Basin Coal Users’ Group was held in association with the ELECTRIC POWER conference in early May in Chicago. Get a taste of the festivities, technical meetings, and the announcement of the group’s 2009 Large and Small Plant of the Year winners in this conference report.

Assertions by renewable energy advocates that renewables have now exceed nuclear in the overall U.S. energy mix are dead wrong, the equivalent of mixing apples and hand grenades.

In 2007, Duke Energy’s W.H. Zimmer Station set out to advance the overall performance of its flue gas desulfurization (FGD) dewatering process. The plant implemented a variety of measures, including upgrading water-solids separation, improving polymer program effectiveness and reliability, optimizing treatment costs, reducing solid waste sent to the landfill, decreasing labor requirements, and maintaining septic-free conditions in clarifiers. The changes succeeded in greatly reducing solid waste generation and achieving total annual savings of over half a million dollars per year.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a federal mapping agency, has of late been propounding the difference between "resources" and "reserves." It says that although the two terms are used interchangeably, the distinction is simple: Reserves are a subset of resources. Coal resources, as an example, include those in-place tonnage estimates determined by summing the volumes for identified and undiscovered deposits of coal, whereas coal reserves are those resources considered "economically producible" at the time of classification, even though extraction facilities are not in place and operative.

If a number of technical, financial, and regulatory hurdles can be overcome, power generated by integrated gasification combined-cycle technology could become an important source for U.S. utilities. Our overview presents diverse perspectives from three industry experts about what it will take to move this technology off the design table and into the field.

Hydraulic fracturing — the process of drilling and then pumping fluid deep into a formation to generate fractures or cracks, typically for extracting natural gas from shale formations — has been under fire lately, owing to concerns that it contaminates drinking water. But while Congress debates proposed legislation that would impose new restrictions on the technology, an entirely different concern related to fracturing — or "fracking" — is emerging: It may trigger earthquakes.

While many CO₂ removal technologies are being researched through laboratory and pilot-scale testing, an existing technology has a significant operating history at commercial-scale facilities, where it is collecting CO₂ from multiple sources, including low-CO₂ concentration flue gas (<3.1% by volume) with high oxygen concentrations (>13% by volume).