Since Robert Stirling invented the Stirling engine in 1816, it has been used in an array of specialized applications. That trend continues today. Its compatibility with clean energy sources is becoming apparent: It is an external combustion engine that can utilize almost any heat source, it encloses a fixed amount of a gaseous working fluid, and it doesn’t require any water — unlike a steam engine.

Italy’s Enel said in August that it has successfully begun operating a power plant in Fusina, near Venice, in the Veneto region of Italy, that is fueled 100% by hydrogen. The industrial-sized plant’s building site was officially opened in April 2008, after which infrastructure and technology work was carried out on schedule. Initial testing of the turbine using methane gas was conducted in the spring of 2009, and now — after completion of the special pipeline — the plant has switched to 100% hydrogen fueling, Italy’s largest energy company said.

Senate Democrats today unveiled the long-awaited 821-page discussion draft of the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” a bill touted as “tough on corporate pollution”—but which will “improve the way the nation generates and uses energy,” without raising the “federal deficit by one single dime.”

Exelon Corp. is the third utility to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the past week, following moves by California utility PG&E Corp. and New Mexico–based PNM Resources. Exelon, the largest nuclear operator in the U.S. cited the “organization’s opposition to climate legislation” for its decision, an allegation the business federation refuted on Tuesday.

Dozens are feared dead after a 330-foot chimney under construction at a 1,200-MW coal-fired power plant collapsed last week in India’s Chhattisgarh state. Teams have so far retrieved 46 bodies from the debris.

A federal appeals board has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will have to reconsider a long-contested air permit for the $3 billion Sithe Global Desert Rock coal-fired power plant on the Navajo Reservation, saying that the agency abused its discretion by not considering integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology in its analysis of best available pollution control systems for the plant.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has joined American Electric Power (AEP) and Alstom in a validation of advanced carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technologies at AEP’s Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, W.Va. The $76 million project is being watched closely around the world because it will be the first to capture carbon dioxide from a pulverized coal-fired power plant as well as inject it into a permanent storage site more than 7,800 feet underground.

NRG Energy’s proposed 112-MW project to repower its coal-fired Somerset Station in Massachusetts with plasma gasification technology has moved on to the due diligence phase of the Department of Energy’s federal loan guarantee program.

New geothermal projects representing as much as 7,100 MW of new baseload capacity were under development in 14 U.S. states between March and September 2009. When added to the 3,100 MW of existing capacity, these could bring U.S. geothermal capacity to more than 10 GW, a new report from the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) shows.