Environmental

Injection of carbon dioxide began last week at one of the world’s first fully integrated coal-fired carbon capture, transportation, and geologic storage projects. The "Anthropogenic Test" conducted by the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) transports carbon dioxide via a 12-mile pipeline from a 25-MW post-combustion carbon capture facility at Southern Co.’s 2,657-MW Plant Barry in Bucks, Ala., and sequesters it within a saline Paluxy Formation at the nearby Citronelle Oil Field operated by Denbury Resources.

That natural gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel isn’t news. But recent scientific studies are showing that it’s also a key tool in the efforts to reduce climate change.

In an exclusive interview with GAS POWER, International Energy Agency Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven explained how natural gas is poised to revolutionize the world’s energy business—but only if producer and policy officials make the right choices.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) on Thursday said it would suspend, for 18 months, enforcement of part of its carbon trading rule as it applies to electricity imported to the state. The measure would help avoid a "negative" impact on energy supplies and reliability for the power-strapped state, the state air regulator said.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Monday ruled 2-1 that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overstepped its authority in disapproving Texas’s Flexible Permit Program and that reasons the agency offered for rejecting the program were "arbitrary and capricious."

A report that examines and compares sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen oxides (NOx), mercury, and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions of the 100 largest power producers in the U.S. based on 2010 generation numbers says those companies produced 88% of the nation’s total power plant emissions of those pollutants.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on June 26 unanimously rejected all pending legal challenges against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) interpretation of the Clean Air Act (CAA) that allows the agency to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs). What is the EPA’s future strategy in its war on coal?

—Sonal Patel is POWER’s senior writer.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a long history of making waves with the electric power industry because of its efforts to regulate the way thermal power plants construct and operate their cooling water intake structures (CWIS). These structures divert billions of gallons of water into power plants’ cooling systems and can injure or kill billions of aquatic organisms.

AES Gener recently completed construction of twin coal-fired, 260-MW units in the electricity-starved desert of northern Chile that may serve as models for future hybrid-fossil plant designs. For meeting an aggressive construction schedule, integrating a 20-MW battery energy storage system, embracing desalination, using the first-of-its-kind seawater cooling tower in South America, and employing innovative financing methods, the AES Gener Angamos plant has earned POWER’s 2012 Plant of the Year Award.