Environmental

A report issued on Friday, Sept. 27 by a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) essentially confirms the conclusions drawn by previous reports that human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels, are largely responsible for climate change. Working Group 1’s “Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2013: […]

A federation of Germany’s biggest companies last week called for urgent reforms to the country’s renewable energy strategy within the first 100 days of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s newly elected government, including abolishing feed-in-tariffs (FITs) that they say have sent power prices in the country soaring. Key points of the 19-page reform proposal submitted by the […]

Although there have been previous attempts at the federal level to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from U.S. coal-fired power plants (remember the Waxman-Markey Bill, the American Clean Energy and

In a noteworthy measure this August, Chinese authorities scrapped proposals for a 2-GW coal-fired power plant, citing—for the first time—concerns about air pollution. And as the authorities in Baguang

The Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) La Cygne Generating Station provides 1,532 MW of peak power from its site south of Kansas City. La Cygne Unit 1 is an 815-MW Babcock & Wilcox cyclone boiler

American Electric Power (AEP) last week said it would retire the 500-MW coal-fired Unit 4 along with other generating units at its Tanners Creek plant in Lawrenceburg, Ind. AEP subsidiary Indiana Michigan Power had announced its decision to retire Tanners Creek Units 1­–3 (495 MW) by mid-2015 in June 2011. A modified settlement reached this […]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday allowed owners of the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Ariz. to consider a third option to curb nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions that was put forth by a coalition of the plant’s stakeholders—and which proposes to keep the plant open until at lest 2020. The 2.3-GW coal-fired power plant […]

Norway’s government on Friday terminated a full-scale project to capture carbon dioxide at the Mongstad refinery on the country’s western coast, citing high risks connected to the facility. It will be replaced with a carbon capture and storage (CCS) program that is designed to “realize” other full-scale CCS projects in the country. Norwegian energy firm […]

Much attention has been devoted recently to the increased cycling that is necessary in fossil plants as more renewable capacity is added to the grid, but data on the precise impacts has been slight. Now, a new study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) aims to correct that. The key findings: While cycling would increase […]