Environmental

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has said that the EPA will reconsider a controversial policy memorandum issued by the agency late last year stating that the agency would not establish a carbon dioxide emission standard for new power plants and other large industrial sources of the heat-trapping gas.

In the face of growing criticism from congressional Democrats of his plan to require electric utilities and other industries to pay for greenhouse gas emission allowances, President Obama told business leaders he is willing to negotiate on the issue, but warned that broad, free allowance allocations would mask the carbon price signal economists say is crucial to speed the deployment of clean technologies needed to fight global warming.

Circulating fluidized bed technology has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions when burning coal and adds the additional flexibility of burning other renewable fuels. Foster Wheeler’s Flexi-Burn technology allows the CFB to produce a CO2-rich flue gas and be part of a practical carbon capture and storage solution.

Once a Soviet satellite, Poland is now transforming into a thoroughly modern nation. To support its growing economy, this recent European Union member country is modernizing its power industry. Exemplifying the advances in the Polish electricity generation market is the 460-MW Patnów II Power Plant — the largest, most efficient (supercritical cycle), and environmentally cleanest lignite-fired unit in the country.

Purge water from a typical wet flue gas desulfurization system contains myriad chemical constituents and heavy metals whose mixture is determined by the fuel source and combustion products as well as the stack gas treatment process. A well-designed water treatment system can tolerate upstream fuel and sorbent variation over time and consists of multiple process treatment steps arranged in just the right order to produce wastewater acceptable for discharge.

POWER published a summary of the flue gas desulfurization system scrubber cost survey conducted by the EUCG’s Fossil Productivity Committee in our July 2007 issue. Although the detailed results of the latest survey are proprietary to EUCG members that participated in it, we are privileged to present the newest summary data. The bottom line: Costs continue to rise but appear to be more predictable.

A professor and consultant who has experience and connections with just about every part of the nuclear power world concludes that the U.S. will need to add 900 nuclear reactors in the next quarter century.

In a major decision aimed at preserving the air quality benefits of the program, a federal court on December 23 modified its July 11 decision to throw out the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR).

The new U.S. president will have a new set of priorities and regulatory policies that will affect the production and generation of electricity. The specifics of the new administration’s energy policy priorities were scant when this article was written, pre-inauguration, but the industry’s challenges are fairly well defined.

Whatever type of carbon-limiting regulations the U.S. faces in the future, they will affect the ability of the insurance industry to offer economic insurance options to the power industry.