Business

As expected, President Obama has named Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Gregory Jaczko, an ally of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), as chairman of the NRC, almost certainly dooming the Yucca Mountain, Nev., site for disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

Gas found in shale deposits and recently discovered natural gas hydrates may be game-changers when it comes to supplying natural gas to the United States.

What makes more sense to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants—a cap-and-trade regime or a carbon tax? It’s a contentious issue among those who generate power and among academic economists and policy makers.

Though Canada is rich in fossil fuels, nuclear power may fuel a significant portion of the nation’s future electrical generation needs, especially in provinces that have traditionally relied on hydropower and fossil fuels.

Turkey’s growing power market has attracted investors and project developers for over a decade, yet their plans have been dashed by unexpected political or financial crises or, worse, obstructed by a lengthy bureaucratic approval process. Now, with a more transparent retail electricity market, government regulators and investors are bullish on Turkey. Is Turkey ready to turn the power on?

Because combined heat and power (CHP) plants optimize energy use, they cut fuel costs and pollution. Even though U.S. power plants have been using CHP for decades, today’s energy experts have a newfound appreciation for its ability to promote sustainable energy use.

Carbon capture and sequestration is very likely to be a key element of any future greenhouse gas legislation. Integrated gasification combined-cycle plants now under design have provisions to separate the CO₂ at elevated pressures. Coal-fired plants have a far more difficult and expensive task — separating and compressing CO₂ from pressures just above atmospheric conditions.

When roving Contributing Editor Mark Axford attended several recent energy conferences, he found the same questions asked at each one about new U.S. generation sources and consumption patterns. Unfortunately, the experts had few good answers to those questions.

Australia, the world’s second-largest exporter of thermal coal and uranium, and a significant exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), faces inevitable electricity rationing and the threat of blackouts unless the government acts urgently to ensure large-scale investments are made in new power-generating capacity, experts from five nations said in April. The Australian Academy for Technology […]

News items of interest to power generation professionals.

Q: What do you get when you gather roughly two dozen top researchers from academia, government, and industry to speak on interdisciplinary energy-related issues for a week?
A: A lot of informative but crowded slides, high-octane brain power, fact-based analysis of where we are and we’re headed globally, informed questions, and surprisingly practical answers.

Industry experts say raw uranium will face increased demand, reduced supply, and higher prices. Will the market bear out those predictions?

Could demand from plug-in hybrid cars crash the grid? A DOE national lab addresses the issue.

Because India has large domestic coal resources (and virtually no other fuel sources); a strong incentive to deploy cheaper, well-proven generation technology; and needs to rapidly increase the availability of electricity to its citizens, the country will likely continue to rely on coal-based power in the long run.

Working for Uncle Sam can be worthwhile or a life-sapping grind, depending on which agency employs you, according to a new survey by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Guess which agency ranked best. (Hint: It’s related to power.)

Does customer satisfaction play a meaningful role in guiding utility operations? Many utilities think it does, as do many regulators. The market apparently doesn’t. Data suggest that the jury is out on the question, and the intuitive answer may not match the empirical evidence.

What role will coal play as the nation moves toward trying to reduce greenhouse gases? The picture is mixed, as these news stories from around the country demonstrate.

The Supreme Court backs restrictions on “once-through” cooling for new plants, while giving a pass to existing plants.

Coal continues to demonstrate considerable financial muscle in the current economic downturn, despite anti-coal rhetoric and concerns about climate change.

Mark Twain summed it up best when he described India more than a century ago as a place of “fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty.” Today, for all its surging economic growth, 300 million Indians still live below the poverty line.

Recognizing that the long-term sunk cost, long project planning and construction timeframe, and high-risk portfolio make it difficult for private investors to raise funds whose maturity matches project completion dates, the Indian government has since 1991 allowed 100% foreign direct investment in the power sector.

News items of interest to power generation professionals.

India has become a global business power even though hundreds of millions of its citizens still live in poverty. To sustain economic growth and lift its people out of poverty, India needs more — and more reliable — power. Details of government plans for achieving those goals demonstrate that pragmatism may be in shorter supply than ambition and political will.

Dozens of institutional investors in U.S. renewable energy projects pulled out of the market when the nation’s liquidity reserves dried up late last year. Some left the renewable market sector in search of more lucrative investment opportunities. Others found themselves unable to take advantage of the attractive tax credits because they themselves lacked profits against which to use the credits. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, approved February 13, changed the investor ground rules — again.

Nuclear loan guarantees in the 2005 Energy Policy Act have proven to be a failure: not just too little, but far too late.

UCLA management guru Sam Culbert calls annual employee performance reviews “bogus” and not conducive to good company management. Get rid of them, he says.

Few companies consider carbon in their supply chain decisions, says an Accenture study. Should purchasers require carbon reductions from suppliers as part of their business model?

North Dakota garnered most of the Department of Energy’s earmarks in March’s omnibus appropriations bill.

It’s not easy being a regulator as the nation faces several daunting energy challenges—integrating renewables, carbon constraints, reliability, and security into an elderly grid that is barely able to keep up with its current mission of moving power from generator to load.

Congress looks at what “smart grid” means and comes up with mixed definitions. The one thing everyone agrees on: The smart grid is going to be expensive.