Environmental

The failure of cap and trade seemed to have doomed the U.S. to missing greenhouse gas emissions cuts it committed to at the 2009 Copenhagen conference. But a funny thing happened on the way to the hothouse.

New federal regulations promise to change the fracking landscape in the coming years, perhaps substantially. But technology may be running ahead of the law, as improvements in the fracking process threaten to make some of the new rules unnecessary.

Oxyfuel technology has been retrofitted at a 700-MW coal-fired power plant in Queensland, Australia, and is now capturing carbon dioxide from one of the plant’s six steam boilers.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has regulated particulate matter as an air pollutant for more than 40 years. Over time, PM regulations and testing methodologies have become more complex, with the focus shifting to smaller particle size fractions and the inclusion of the condensable form of PM. New developments make navigating the permitting and compliance process efficiently more important than ever.

Two Environmental Protection Agency rules are facing legal challenges. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards is being challenged by half the U.S. states, while a decision in a case concerning the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule could be reached as soon as this summer.

In late March, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed its first-ever carbon pollution standard for new power plants, limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new fossil fuel–fired power plants. However, the technology options for complying wiith the proposed rule remain few and expensive, as recent developments demonstrate.

Coal generation, as a percentage of total power output in the U.S., declined steadily to 39% at the end of 2011 from about 51% in 2002, while generation from natural gas–fired combined cycle plants grew to more than 20% from 10% over the same period, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said in late April, as it released its annual assessment for U.S. energy markets.

Natural gas–fired fleets comprising diverse turbine unit types are operating their units more these days because of the historic low price of natural gas. With increased operating hours, fleet owners are challenged to find the best ways to manage their SCR catalyst systems.

Rwanda’s Lake Kivu has a nickname: “Killer Lake.” The shimmering 1,040–square mile body of freshwater on the western branch of the Great East African Rift that straddles the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has had a bloody history. Not only was it the site of atrocity during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but scientists say that it is also one of three known “exploding lakes.”

The impact of recently released air emissions regulations has stirred heated debate about forced coal plant closures and the possibility of reduced grid reliability in some regions. Biomass power may be an unexpected beneficiary of the new rules.