By Kennedy Maize Energy Secretary Steven Chu can’t serve two masters, only one: the White House. Chu is going learn that truth, in an ongoing battle between DOE and the Office of Management and Budget. Predictably, the showdown between the entrenched bureaucracy and industrial interests that Chu serves daily and the political administration he serves […]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday proposed to lower ground-level ozone standards from those set in March 2008. The tighter so-called “smog” regulations would require power plants to cut their emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and other volatile organic compounds.

The UK government’s Crown Estate on Friday parceled out rights to develop 32-GW worth of offshore wind energy in nine coastal zones. The announcement was part of the government’s ambitious plans to develop a £75 billion offshore wind industry by 2020.

Georgia Power will delay the conversion of its coal-fired 155-MW Plant Mitchell in Albany, Ga., to run on wood waste until the Environmental Protection Agency better defines rules governing industrial boiler emissions in April 2010.

NV Energy has dropped plans to build a transmission line through Nevada, announcing on Monday that it had instead signed an agreement with an LS Power affiliate, Great Basin Transmission, to jointly own a 500-kilovolt (kV) transmission line running 250 miles from north of Las Vegas to near Ely, Nev.

Three Chinese engineers hired by Shandong Electric Power Construction Corp. have been arrested in connection with the collapse last year of a 330-foot chimney under construction at a 1,200-MW coal-fired power plant in India’s eastern state of Chhattisgarh, killing 41.

Last week, Ameren Corp. and Dominion Virginia Power separately issued statements claiming the utilities had spent billions on improvements to existing power plants.

By Kennedy Maize The alleged U.S. “nuclear renaissance” has been slowing creeping toward the horizon of reality for over five years. Developers have filed plans at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Department of Energy has dangled $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for new nukes, although so far it’s just financial foreplay. The nuclear industry […]

By Kennedy Maize Some additional damaging brush strokes on “Climategate,” these related to statistical analysis and peer review. When the story of the climate emails surfaced, and the apologists insisted that there was nothing behind the alleged doctoring of evidence, I first thought about the NAS review of the Mann “hockey stick” representation. It was […]

San Antonio’s CPS Energy said on Monday it had received the contractually mandated cost estimate for the proposed South Texas Project Units 3 and 4 from contractor Toshiba—but it stressed it would make no decisions on the project until “rigorous analysis” of price and methodology was completed.