Environmental

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.

New coal-fired power plant ash management regulations appear to be inevitable, perhaps as soon as year-end. The Tennessee Valley Authority and Edison Electric Institute are on board with new regulations, as long as the ash is regulated as a nonhazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

The UK has all but doomed new coal-fired capacity by simultaneously setting binding carbon reduction goals and by requiring carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) of carbon emissions from new  mid-size coal-fired power plants. Existing plants will also be required to retrofit their plants when CCS technology is demonstrated, now estimated to happen by 2020.

FirstEnergy has announced plans to repower two coal-fired units at the R.E. Burger plant to burn biomass. Conversion of the two units, expected to be completed by 2012, gets the utility off the hot seat with the EPA for alleged Clean Air Act violations.

Commonly, 20% of the cement (by weight) in a concrete mix is replaced by fly ash. Fly ash enhances the workability, durability, and ultimate strength of concrete at a lower cost than cement. However, mercury sorbents can change the ash properties to make it unsuitable as a concrete additive. New “concrete-friendly” sorbents can keep the revenues from ash sales flowing.

For the past 26 years, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) has hosted an annual conference in Houston that is world-renowned for its high-profile speakers and attendees’ willingness to exchange ideas and share industry forecasts. The consensus this year was that the power industry remains strong but market and political forces, often working at cross-purposes, make bringing any new power generation to market more problematic than ever.

According to a new study from Emerging Energy Research, more than $20 billion will be spent on carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects this year at 50 power generation projects totalling 16 GW around the world. The European Union (EU), with an investment of $11.6 billion, leads all efforts, because it is pressed to achieve a target to reduce carbon emissions by 20% of 1990 levels by 2020. In December, the governing body reached agreement on a climate and energy package, which includes a framework for CCS and a directive on the way EU members and Norway will regulate licenses to ensure reliable carbon storage. The U.S. takes second place, earmarking $6 billion, and Canada is third, at $2.7 billion.

The current Spanish electricity model is unsustainable: Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are hard to control, demand shows no sign of weakening, and the country is overly dependent on imported fuel. These are the conclusions of a team of scientists from the Institute for Research in Technology of the University of Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, who looked at how the Spanish electricity sector would evolve in four different scenarios.

The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered a review of some 300 U.S. utility coal combustion waste sites and said it will develop new regulations to ensure that incidents like December’s colossal coal ash spill in Kingston, Tenn., are not repeated.