Environmental

An Alabama power plant that has operated for more than a century will close in April, with Alabama Power saying that the cost to comply with government regulations on the handling of coal ash and wastewater no longer make the plant economically viable. Jim Heilbron, Alabama Power’s senior vice president and senior production officer, on […]

Project will advance Oregon’s clean energy future while delivering affordable electricity for PGE customers Portland, Ore. Feb. 12, 2019 — Portland General Electric Company (NYSE: POR) and NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE), today announced plans to construct a new energy facility in Eastern Oregon combining 300 megawatts of […]

COMMENTARY Launched last week by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the “Green New Deal” appears to pick up where President Franklin Roosevelt left off with his “Second Bill of Rights” announced in his 1944 State of the Union Address1. More manifesto than mandate, the Green New Deal seeks to be a lens through which legislators’ […]

Utility-sponsored energy-efficiency programs have always seemed like a contradiction to me. Obviously, power companies make money by selling electricity, so encouraging customers to install energy-efficient

Two weeks of intense negotiations at the 24th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) in Katowice, Poland, last December culminated in

Coal power plants today must find ways to operate economically if they are to survive. Every area of cost reduction must be investigated. On the maintenance side, time savings must be sought—to reduce

The threat to power grid resilience and reliability due to the continued retirement of coal-fired power plants has generated calls for immediate action. A severe weather event such as the “bomb cyclone” or

China’s power sector reforms represent perhaps the world’s largest industrial reform program, with important consequences on both domestic and global levels. In 2015, Erdaoqiao, a settlement in southwest

Brutally cold temperatures in the midwestern and northeastern U.S. spurred grid operator alerts as natural gas demand has surged, power prices have soared, and there have been forced generator outages.  The polar vortex, an extreme cold event characterized by back-to-back cold fronts, has so far prompted states of emergency in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan. On […]

The Colstrip Power Plant, a four-unit, 2,094-MW coal-fired station located about 100 miles east of Billings, Montana, could see its coal supply contract nullified as a result of Westmoreland Coal Co.’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Westmoreland operates the 25,000-acre Rosebud coal mine, among others. Rosebud is adjacent to the Colstrip plant and supplies almost all […]