How does your company prepare and share fossil plant performance data? What data are important, and how much effort is required to collect and report the data? What are the most important statistics for reporting key fossil plant operations? The latest EUCG benchmarking survey reveals the favored fossil performance metrics at several of the largest utilities in eight key categories.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., February 24, 2011 – The most committed global warming alarmists are alarmed by the fact that – contrary to their claims that the science is settled – formidable scientists with worldwide reputations disagree. Credentialed experts such as Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer do not buy what Jim Hansen, Michael Mann, […]

The U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday passed, with a 235-189 vote, a short-term government funding measure that cuts more than $61 billion from the remainder of the fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget—including a $3 billion slash to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) budget. The continuing resolution (CR) seeks to block the EPA from implementing or enforcing statutory or regulatory greenhouse gas (GHG) rules affecting stationary sources that became effective after January 1, 2011.

In response to a federal court order, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today issued final Clean Air Act standards for large and small boilers and incinerators that burn solid waste and sewage sludge. The EPA said, however, that it would reconsider the rules because “certain issues of central relevance” arose after the period of public comment.

Following President Obama’s $97 million budget request last week to support research into small modular reactors (SMRs), Westinghouse introduced a 200-MW class integral pressurized water reactor modeled on the company’s third-generation AP1000 reactor. The company also said it was preparing to collaborate with the U.S. Department of Energy’s SMR demonstration program.

The past week brought important news from state legislatures regarding nuclear power plants. Minnesota voted to lift a 17-year ban on new nuclear plants; a bill that would allow utilities to recoup costs for early site permits advanced in Missouri; and the Indiana Senate is preparing, amid controversy, to vote on a key measure that could incentivize development and construction of new nuclear generation in that state.

Progress Energy’s CEO William Johnson, who last month agreed to a merger deal with Duke Energy, on Thursday told attendees at a conference that proposed nuclear power plants in Florida and North Carolina would not be operational until at least 2020.

Dominion Energy last week told ISO New England, the power grid operator for six New England states,  that it could shutter its 60-year-old 738-MW Salem Harbor coal- and oil-fired power plant in Massachusetts by June 2014 to avoid retrofitting the facility with expensive pollution controls required by federal environmental regulations.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., 22 February 2011 – NRG Energy’s South Texas two-unit nuclear project, which has been on life support for months, may soon win a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, according to several industry sources. But the money for the loan guarantee may get tangled up in Congress’s current […]

No initial evidence had been found that the Texas power market had been manipulated when grid operator the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) on Feb. 2 ordered rolling blackouts, but investigations would continue, Texas regulators told legislators on Tuesday. The blackouts were necessary as some 82 power plants—out of 550 on the grid—went down for various reasons while freezing temperatures caused a record-breaking demand spike, ERCOT said.