Business

On August 3, 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a much-anticipated suite of regulations, featuring the final Clean Power Plan’s guidelines for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing power plants under Clean Air Act section 111(d). This package has sparked great interest, and early reactions run the gamut from enthusiastic support to entrenched opposition. […]

Nearly two years after Japan’s last nuclear power plant was shut down for safety checks, Kyushu Electric Power Co. has started up the 890-MW Sendai-1. The event marks a significant milestone for the country’s nuclear sector, which was crippled by the Fukushima disaster in 2011.  Kyushu started up Sendai-1 at 10:30 a.m. local time and […]

Though most power generators and states might have preferred to not deal at all with a new rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions, the final Clean Power Plan (CPP), released August 3, gives most of the power industry most of what it asked for in terms of revisions to the 2014 proposed plan. In any regulatory […]

In a deal said to be the largest ever involving electric cooperatives, a group of 12 cooperatives completed the purchase of Alliant Energy’s electric service territory in southern Minnesota, which serves more than 43,000 customers. The agreement was signed in September 2013 between Interstate Power and Light Co. (IPL)—Alliant’s Iowa utility—and Southern Minnesota Energy Cooperative […]

Ameren Missouri has dropped plans to build a second nuclear unit at its Callaway Energy Center, citing shaky economics in the context of cheaper renewables, low demand, and other factors for its decision. “While we continue to believe nuclear power must be an important clean energy source for our company and country, as evidenced by […]

Australia Slashes Its Renewable Target to 33 TWh. The parliament of coal-rich Australia on June 23 approved legislation to slash the country’s Renewable Energy Target from 41 TWh to 33 TWh. The contentious bill passed after a compromise agreement in May (see “Australian Lawmakers Strike RET Deal” in POWER’s July 2015 issue). Australia’s RET, which […]

Courtesy: SaskPower There was no debate among our editorial team when it came to selecting the most interesting and worthy project worldwide for this year’s top award. Boundary Dam Power Station Unit 3 is the world’s first operating coal-fired power plant to implement a full-scale post-combustion carbon capture and storage system. It did so more […]

France’s state-owned utility EDF will snap up between 51% and 75% of troubled nuclear giant AREVA’s reactor business in a possible $2.96 billion deal.  While the French government owns about 87% of AREVA and 85% of EDF, the utility that operates the nation’s aging 58-reactor fleet, it has pledged to look at all options to […]

Though the U.S. Senate voted 64–29 this week to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im), the House may adjourn for its summer break without taking action on the issue.  Congress let the Ex-Im bank’s charter lapse for the first time in its 81 years of continuous operation on June […]

As part of a remedy package to appease the European Commission, Alstom will accept $331 million less than the original $13.63 billion purchase price offered by General Electric (GE) to close the deal.  The much-anticipated deal has come under close scrutiny by the European Commission, which opened a full-scale antitrust investigation into the deal on […]

NextEra Energy’s $4.3 billion bid to buy Hawaiian Electric Industries faces big, perhaps insurmountable, obstacles before the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, which opened the record on the deal last week. The commission published the public filings in the case, which were overwhelmingly negative. Hawaii’s governor, David Ige, panned the deal in a press conference on […]

Talen Energy Corp. announced on July 20 that it has agreed to acquire MACH Gen LLC, which owns three combined cycle, natural gas–fired power plants with more than 2.5 GW of total capacity for $1.175 billion. Talen Energy was formed on June 1 when PPL Corp. spun off its PPL Energy Supply business and combined […]

Renewables giant SunEdison will acquire emerging distributed energy firm Vivint Solar’s 523-MW rooftop solar portfolio in a $2.2 billion acquisition deal that signals momentum for the business model that has challenged the bottom lines of traditional utilities. SunEdison and Vivint Solar signed a definitive merger agreement on July 20. It will involve the acquisition of Vivint […]

Emerging energy technologies such as rooftop solar, microgrids, and distributed generation could adversely affect reliability of the nation’s grid, a new report from the Electric Markets Research Foundation (EMRF) warns.  The non-profit research entity whose mission it is to fund studies on significant electric market issues notes in its report, “Changing Uses of the Electric […]

Interstate Power and Light (IPL) will be forced to spend $620 million to retire 10 coal-fired units and retire, refuel, or install pollution controls at several others in Iowa under a settlement reached with the federal government.  The Alliant Energy subsidiary has long anticipated the settlement announced on July 15 by the Environmental Protection Agency […]

Mississippi Power must rebate $281 million in funds collected since 2013 for rate increases related to the lignite-fired power plant under construction in Kemper County, the Mississippi Public Service Commission (MPSC) ordered on Tuesday.  The state regulatory body also ordered the company and its parent company Southern Co. to stop collecting Kemper’s rate on customer […]

Five of Germany’s largest lignite power plants will be mothballed to allow the country that is already phasing out nuclear power to meet ambitious climate goals by 2020.  In what it called a “milestone decision,” the government on July 2 agreed to scrap plans to impose a controversial—and by some accounts, illegal—climate tax for conventional […]

Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, PREPA, Wednesday made a $415 million payment to its creditors (mostly hedge fund investors), avoiding a default and giving the troubled government-owned utility more time to work out a deal to restructure its $9 billion debt. Had the utility defaulted, according to financial experts, it could have triggered the default […]

Wind is no longer a niche alternative energy industry, American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) CEO Tom Kiernan told attendees at WINDPOWER 2015.  Despite policy hurdles, the wind sector has seen exponential growth and formidable cost reductions; it has the government’s endorsement for a low-carbon future; and it’s making up an ever-larger share of the nation’s […]

Nigeria brought 1.5 GW of natural gas–fired generation from three brand new power plants online in May, adding much-needed capacity to the grid. But because the West African country that is Africa’s biggest economy doesn’t have the means of transporting its abundant gas resources to its power plants, its crippling power shortages are expected to […]

What separates investor-owned utilities (IOUs) and public power companies these days? Less than you might imagine. In early June, while the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), the trade association for IOUs, was holding its annual meeting in New Orleans, I was in Minneapolis at the annual conference of the American Public Power Association (APPA), which represents […]

The global hydropower sector has seen an upsurge in development activity lately, with installed capacity growing by 27% since 2004 (Figure 2), a new report from the World Energy Council (WEC) suggests. 2. World hydropower development. Hydropower development around the world stalled from 1999 to 2005, reflecting the impact of the World Commission on Dams, […]

At the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), generation transitions are nothing new. The nation’s largest public power system—with 34 GW of generating capacity, supplying retail distributors with nine million

SaskPower, the Saskatchewan provincial utility that made history last year by developing the first full-scale post-combustion carbon capture retrofit for an operating coal-fired power plant, has taken the next step in fostering development of the technology. Its Carbon Capture Test Facility (CCTF) has officially been launched in Estevan, Saskatchewan. The June 18 launch was attended […]

Oregon-based utility and Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary PacifiCorp filed plans this month to shut down nearly 3 GW of its coal generation by 2033 as it moves toward greater integration with the California energy market. PacifiCorp’s 2015 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which it has filed with regulators in Oregon, Washington, California, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho, contains […]

China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. (SNPTC)—general contractor of the first four AP1000 units being built in China—and China Power Investment Corp. officially announced a merger in a move to reinforce the country’s plans to eventually export reactors. The new company, State Power Investment Corp., will own assets worth more than $112.94 billion. SNPTC was […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will soon issue DTE Electric a combined license (COL) to build and operate an Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) at its existing Fermi 2 site in Michigan.  The federal regulator announced on April 30 that it found the staff’s review adequate to make the necessary regulatory safety and environmental […]

What happens in Washington, D.C., seldom stays in Washington, D.C., so on April 21 at the 17th annual ELECTRIC POWER Conference & Exhibition, the Powder River Basin (PRB) Coal Users’ Group took a look at what is headed their way from the nation’s capital. The first item was, surprise, a success story, according to Rick […]

This interview with Dr. Fatih Birol, Chief Economist, Director of Global Energy Economics and Executive Director (starting September 2015), International Energy Agency (IEA) was conducted by Global Business Reports in May 2015. It has been edited for style and length and is a web-only supplement to the sponsored report “Power in Turkey” appearing in the […]

This resource list is a web-only supplement to the June 2015 issue of POWER feature story on women in the power generation sector and results of our April 2015 survey of women in the power industry. Although coal and gas provide a larger percentage of U.S. electricity than nuclear, wind, or solar energy, the fossil […]