Participating utilities pulled the plug on a fully permitted project to build the $1.6 billion Big Stone II coal-fired power plant near Millbank, S.D., on Monday, saying they could not find new backers necessary to build the 500-to-600-MW facility.

The Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) said on Friday it would permit Constellation Energy’s sale of 49.99% of its nuclear business to French group Electricité de France (EDF) for $4.5 billion if Constellation subsidiary Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. agreed to pay $100 rebates to its customers and invested $250 million to control power rate increases.

Entergy Corp. reportedly won’t pursue new nuclear builds in the U.S. Southeast because of lower demand seen after Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, the recession, and abundant but unused independent power generation in the region, the company’s CEO J. Wayne Leonard told reporters at this week’s Edison Electric Institute financial conference.

The Department of Energy on Thursday announced up to $338 million in Recovery Act funding for the exploration and development of new geothermal fields and research into advanced geothermal technologies. The grants, which will be matched more than one-for-one with an additional $353 million in private and nonfederal cost-share funds, back 123 projects in 39 states.

Twelve companies and the Desertec Foundation on Friday formally launched a joint venture to manage a project that seeks to generate up to 15% of Europe’s power by 2050 with giant solar and wind farms installed in North African and Middle Eastern deserts. Firms include energy giants E.ON, RWE, and Siemens Energy, and investment companies Deutsche Bank and Munich Re.

Utility industry representatives opposed legislation at a House subcommittee hearing last week that could authorize the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to enforce cyber security standards on all plants connected to the bulk power system.

By Kennedy Maize President Obama in late October announced that the Department of Energy would award $3.4 billion in grants to allegedly “smart grid” technologies. As I parse the awards, my reaction is that they are fundamentally stupid. Most of the money – to be matched by the private sector (those matches presumably are tax deductible […]

In a series of ironies, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has voted to reject an early finding that the U.S. can adequately manage nuclear reactor spent fuel, in the wake of the Obama administration’s decision to pull the radioactive plug on Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The vote by the majority Republicans on the commission effectively puts a temporary ban on new nuclear reactor construction in the U.S.

U.S. Democrats in the White House and Congress are in an unseemly race to get something, anything, enacted into law before the December climate gab fest in Copenhagen. But it’s a fools’ game and unlikely to succeed.

What’s to learn about regulation from Julia Child and Michael Pollan, gurus of the food world? Plenty, says Scott Hempling of the National Regulatory Research Institute.