President Obama has set an ambitious goal of doubling renewable energy production in the U.S. within three years, which would spur the development of a clean-tech economy and address the challenge of climate change. There is just one problem: even if we achieve the president’s goal of producing more renewable energy, we have no way of actually delivering that energy to where it’s needed.

The Obama administration’s “new OSHA” has a simple message for U.S. industry. This message has been delivered loudly and clearly by both Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Acting Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health Jordan Barab. Their message: “There is a new sheriff in town.” And we all know what sheriffs do. They aggressively enforce the law. That is exactly what the new Occupational Safety and Health Administration intends to do.

Coal-fired power plants that fire low-cost coals or that are equipped with combustion modifications for NO_x controls are challenged with maintaining good combustion conditions while maximizing generation and minimizing emissions. In many cases, significant unit derates, availability losses, and an increase in unburned carbon levels can be attributed to poor combustion conditions that occur as a result of poorly controlled local air/fuel distribution within the boiler furnace. Fortunately, a new generation of combustion optimization technologies is available that uses burner air and fuel controls and spatially distributed combustion monitors to detect and correct local furnace air/fuel distribution imbalances.

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.

By Kennedy Maize Here’s an interesting set of ironies. The Republican majority on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken a position that, at least formally, blocks new nuclear reactors in the U.S., while the sole Democrat on the commission, Chairman Greg Jaczko, widely viewed as opposed to the agenda of the nuclear industry, has […]

By Kennedy Maize In journalism, we call it “burying the lead.” That’s what the New York Times did in a Sept. 25 story headlined “Build a Better Bulb for a $10 Million Prize.” The story said that the U.S. Department of Energy is prepared to pay $10 million for development of an efficient, cost-effective replacement […]

The catastrophe at the 6,400-MW Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant that killed 75 workers in southern Siberia on Aug. 17 had a number of contributing causes, including design, operation, and repair drawbacks, an investigative report released last week by the Russian industrial safety regulator Rostekhnadzor said. But the agency also pointed fingers at six high-ranking officials, saying that the accident resulted from their “negligence, laxity, and a lack of engineering thinking.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week proposed a rule that would limit future regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Clean Air Act to industrial facilities that emit 25,000 tons or more of carbon dioxide annually. The announcement was made on the same day as Senate Democrats unveiled the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” indicating increased pressure on Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation.