Moonshots and Megaprojects
Fifty years ago this July, NASA successfully landed men on the moon and safely returned them to Earth. In this year’s documentary about the mission, Apollo 11 , director Todd Douglas Miller draws on a
Archive: Finance
Innovative Fabric Structures Offer Power Plants Options
The design of a power plant often revolves around efficiency and mapping out operations in a manner that decreases unnecessary expenditures, while increasing productivity. This challenge produces the need for
Leadership Shakeup at ABB Amid Power Grids Business Overhaul
Only months after ABB announced Hitachi would acquire a majority stake in its flagship power grids business for $11 billion, the company’s board of directors ousted CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer and officially launched a search for a new leader. The Zurich-based technology giant said on April 17 that the board of directors and Spiesshofer “mutually agreed […]
States Seek Financial Tools to Replace Coal with Clean Energy
Colorado lawmakers are considering legislation (HB19-1037) designed to help the state’s investor-owned utilities gracefully back out of non-economic coal-fired power plants. Colorado is at the forefront of
The Economic Thicket of Generating Cost Comparisons
Comparing the costs of differing electric generating technologies has become popular among advocates for particular technologies and those seeking to find the optimal approach to new generation. While getting
Bagging DOE Support, Westinghouse Eyes Demonstration for Nuclear Micro-reactor by 2022
The Department of Energy (DOE) is funding a project that would prepare Westinghouse’s 25-MWe eVinci micro-reactor for nuclear demonstration readiness by 2022. The agency on March 27 said it will provide $12.9 million of the estimated $28.6 million Westinghouse needs for a project to prepare the micro-reactor for a demonstration, including for design, analysis, licensing […]
Germany’s Coal Exit Bound to Be Complicated
Eight years after Germany decided it would halt nuclear power production by 2022, the country that relied on lignite and hard coal for 38% of its generated power in 2018 will phase out coal by 2038 or earlier
COP24’s Hefty Impact on the Power Sector
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
Colstrip Power Plant Threatened by Westmoreland Bankruptcy
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 […]
