Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL) last week said that it will likely open its 90,000-panel photovoltaic (PV) solar facility later this month. The DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Arcadia, Fla., project, which will overtake Nevada’s Nellis Solar Power Plant for the title of largest solar photovoltaic (PV) facility in the nation and in North America, will begin operation as several other large U.S. solar projects are being shelved.

The cap-and-trade approach will best tackle global warming and sustain economic recovery because, though reducing carbon emissions will cost money, alternatives to cap and trade will cost more, Exelon Chair and CEO John W. Rowe reiterated on Tuesday in a keynote address at the PennFuture Southeast Global Warming Conference in Penn Valley, Pa.

In the wake of this week’s Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) in London—a meeting attended by leaders from 22 countries to explore the best ways to accelerate commercialization of carbon capture and storage (CCS)—several significant announcements were made around the world.

The $8 million pilot project funded by 37 power companies from around the world to test Alstom’s advanced chilled ammonia process on a 1.7-MW flue slipstream at We Energies’ coal-fired Pleasant Prairie power plant in Wisconsin has demonstrated more than 90% carbon capture—or about 40 tons each day—sponsors said on Thursday.

American Superconductor Corp. (AMCS) announced on Tuesday that its Superconductor Electricity Pipelines have been chosen for the Tres Amigas Project, the nation’s first renewable energy market hub. The Tres Amigas Project, introduced yesterday in Albuquerque by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who was energy secretary in President Bill Clinton’s administration, focuses on uniting the three main U.S. power grids for the first time to enable faster adoption of renewable energy and increase the reliability of the U.S. grid.

By Kennedy Maize For those of us who follow the ever-contentious global warming debate, one of the key areas of conflict is the recent climate record. Is the globe warming, cooling, or just puttering along. It’s a game that depends on where you start and how you aggregate the data. Each side accuses the other […]

By Kennedy Maize In the words of shade-tree philosopher and New York Yankee Hall-of-Fame catcher Yogi Berra, “It’s deja vu all over again.” The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio has put on hold a plan by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. to send out compact fluorescent light bulbs to its customers, unbidden, and bill them for the […]

Environmental researchers from Harvard and Tsinghua Universities released a new study, published as the cover story in the September 11 issue of Science, suggesting that China could meet its entire future electricity needs through wind power alone. Studies that focus on a single technology as the silver bullet that solves all of our energy problems often ignore the practical side of their solutions, leaving mistaken impressions in the public mind.

The decision to retube a heat exchanger or condenser begins with understanding why tubes are failing. Only when the “why” is understood can the economic replacement tube material be selected. We explore the most common tube material failure mechanisms and then illustrate how to perform a proper life-cycle analysis for that new set of condenser tubes your plant so desperately needs. In sum, there are many reasons to consider getting the copper out of your condenser.

In another major legal victory for states pressing for controls on industry emissions of carbon dioxide, a federal appeals court has reversed a lower court decision and ruled that eight states and the city of New York City could bring “nuisance” suits against five coal-burning utilities to curb greenhouse gas discharges that the states claim are causing damage to their natural resources.