The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final rule in December that strengthens its National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) to 12.0 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m³) but declared it would not finalize a proposal to update separate secondary PM2.5 standards. The final rule’s issuance was lauded by environmental and public health groups, though industry groups opposed it, citing concerns that nonattainment areas would suffer economic setbacks.

Fuel for power generation will account for about 55% of demand-related energy growth through 2040, ExxonMobil forecasts in its latest annual energy forecast. Like several other forecasters, the Irving, Texas–based oil and gas company also predicts that natural gas will emerge as the leading source of electricity generation by 2040.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Dec. 20 finalized changes to a specific set of adjustments to the Clean Air Act that apply to coal, oil, natural gas, and biomass boilers and certain solid waste incinerators.

Embattled Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson announced her resignation on December 27 citing the pursuit of “new challenges” and “opportunities to make a difference” as the reasons for leaving her high-profile post. I suspect her departure was caused less by altruism and more by self-preservation.

The world’s first supercritical pulverized coal–fired low mass flux vertical tube Benson boiler is Jinzhushan 3, located in the Hunan Province of the People’s Republic of China. The 600-MW Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group Inc. once-through boiler burns Chinese anthracite using downshot pulverized coal (PC) technology. Part 1 of this three-part article presented a summary of the project design features. Part 2 discussed the boiler technology. This third and final part reviews the plant’s performance test results.

Proposed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules and a greater reliance on newer generation technologies have put the nation’s aging fossil-fueled generation units at risk of retirement. The numbers demonstrate that the U.S. power generating fleet is older than you may believe.

An open letter published in the Washington Examiner by a group of climate scientists and meteorologists states why they believe the theory of anthropogenic warming is far from settled science and the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have disregarded established methods of scientific inquiry.

Interest in a carbon tax seems to be growing in Washington as a means to increase revenue for the federal government and to fight climate change. There are three good reasons why instituting a carbon tax is a very bad idea.

While the war on coal is working to reduce coal generation and consumption and associated carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, many world economies are looking toward coal for future generation needs. China, India, Russia, and Germany, to name a few, are building coal-fired power plants.

Among the surprises in President Barack Obama’s second Inaugural Address on Monday was his promise to address the challenges of climate change and sustainable energy. An independent draft report released about a week earlier on climate change and its impacts in the U.S. may have helped to fuel his renewed resolve on these intertwined issues.

A federal court on Tuesday ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exceeded its authority when it established a screening tool that could allow some new power plants to be exempted from certain requirements under the EPA’s October 2010-finalized rule aimed at curbing emissions of particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter.

A proposal released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday could require owners of the 2.3-GW coal-fired Navajo Generating Station (NGS) near the Arizona-Utah state line to install emission controls worth $1.1 billion to improve visibility at 11 national parks and wilderness areas in the Southwest.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Friday narrowly approved a determination that U.S. industry is materially injured or threatened with material injury by imports of unfairly subsidized utility-scale wind towers from China and Vietnam. The ITC’s determination gives the Department of Commerce the green light to issue antidumping and countervailing duty orders on imports of those products from the two countries.

Once a world leader in innovation and manufacturing of clean energy technologies, the U.S. now faces significant competitive challenges from Europe and Asia, and it lags behind other nations on measures that include renewables deployment, manufacturing, and innovation, a new report suggests.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review challenges to a 2010 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule setting the acceptable limit for sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the air at 75 parts per billion (ppb) over a 1-hour period. The denial of certiorari leaves intact the EPA’s final revision to the primary National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for SO2 emissions from power plants and other industrial facilities.

The first official day of committee activity in the 113th Congress saw the advancement of two hydropower bills with bipartisan support in the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday proposed four reforms intended to reduce the time and cost to process transmission interconnection requests from generating facilities of 20 MW or smaller. The reforms would boost reliability by increasing energy supply and remove hurdles in the development of new renewable power sources, FERC said.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., 19 January 2013 — This is a story without much significance beyond the usual cautionary tale about bureaucracies, which hardly needs retelling. But it is amusing nonetheless. So I present for your amusement and edification, the tale of the vanishing nuclear plants. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which watches over […]

More than 107 GW of operating capacity in the U.S. electric power market were bought and sold over 2012, mostly as a result of three large mergers or acquisitions, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) found in an analysis of power plant capacity purchases released on Wednesday.

A federal appeals court last week denied a motion from developers of new coal- and oil-fired power plants to force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to finalize its reconsidered Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) for new sources by March and help them avoid a regulatory Catch-22 posed by a looming rule to curb greenhouse gas emissions in new plants.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last week completed the final environmental impact statement (EIS) for the DTE Electric Co.’s proposed new Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) at its Enrico Fermi Nuclear Plant.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid operator that oversees 85% of Texas’ electric load, should consider additional potential solutions to address its worrisome resource adequacy and provide a plan outlining measures it will take to increase woefully low reserve margins, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) said in a strongly worded letter last week.

The Department of Energy (DOE) quietly unveiled a new strategy for the management and disposal of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel on Friday. The strategy calls for a phased, consent-based approach to siting and implementing a nuclear waste management and disposal system, and it endorses building a pilot interim storage facility by 2021.

A report by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergence Response Team (ICS-CERT) reveals that infected USB drives spread common and sophisticated malware in the control systems at two power plants in separate incidents late last year.

An agreement reached between the Virginia Attorney General’s office, Dominion Virginia Power, and Appalachian Power proposes to reduce financial incentives associated with the utilities’ generation of renewables and construction of new fossil fuel–fired power plants.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is the latest key administration official who plans to step down after the beginning of President Barack Obama’s second term on Jan. 21.

A fire in the main transformer of the South Texas Project (STP) Electric Generating Station’s Unit 2 on Tuesday evening automatically tripped the reactor in Bay City, Texas, and powered on emergency diesel generators.

Two U.S. nuclear reactors that have long been idled—one for roughly two years and the other for three—may see even longer periods of shutdown, new reports suggest. Federal regulators said significant work remains before the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska can be restarted, while Progress Energy Florida on Monday told the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) that it was a week away from submitting a draft report evaluating repair options for its Crystal River reactor.

Georgia Power on Monday said it was seeking state regulatory permission to decertify and retire 15 coal- and oil-fired generating units—a total capacity of 2,061 MW—citing several factors, including costs to comply with existing and future environmental regulations, economic conditions, and lower natural gas prices.

A settlement reached with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Justice to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Air Act will require Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) to invest about $300 million in pollution control technology, pay a civil penalty of $1.2 million, and spend $6 million on environmental mitigation projects.