Gas

Some of the U.S. coal market’s own product wound up in its stocking this Christmas season. Despite hope from the election of Donald Trump and a potential shift toward more coal-friendly energy policies, coal plant owners across the country continued the trend toward shutdowns and reduced operations that have marked the past few years. Coal […]

In a joint statement on December 20, the leaders of the United States and Canada announced that they had developed a new partnership that effectively bans additional licenses for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on December 15 proposed reforms to its large generator (20 MW or more) interconnection processes. The notice of proposed rulemaking (or NOPR in FERC-speak) would revise FERC’s 2003 pro-forma large generator interconnection procedures and agreement. At the FERC meeting approving the proposed rule, FERC Chairman Norman Bay said, “Much […]

  ·    Two more Industrial Trent 60 gas turbines and generators for Bayonne Energy Center, located in New Jersey and supplying power to New York City ·    Simple cycle power plant is able to ramp up quickly to meet peak electricity demand with best in class simple cycle efficiencies ·    Additional extension to current long-term service contract Siemens […]

Although optimistic about the future of the coal industry under the Trump administration, Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., the largest underground coal mining company in the U.S., does not expect the president-elect to bring back coal mining jobs or spur new coal-fired power plant construction. “I’ve asked President-elect Trump to temper his comments […]

The tumultuous Trump transition took another turn late Tuesday, as reports from many media outlets said he has picked Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a freshman who won a second House term in November’s election, to be Secretary of Interior. Many of the same media sources late last week said Trump would pick Washington Rep. Cathy […]

As one of its last official acts, the Obama administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) backed away from making a definitive statement on the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, saying it lacked sufficient data to quantify their severity and frequency. The 1,200-page final report issued December 13, “Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic […]

President-elect Donald Trump has picked former Texas governor Rick Perry to be his energy secretary

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) as his nominee to be Secretary of the Interior. There had been no official announcement as this was being written December 9, but CNBC said it had been informed of the choice by a “senior Trump official.” The Wall Street Journal and the […]

In a finding that is likely to boost controversy over the future of U.S. energy policy, a comprehensive study of the full levelized cost of energy (LCOE) from various sources of electricity conducted by the University of Texas (UT) at Austin’s Energy Institute found that wind turbines and natural gas combined cycle power plants (CCPPs) […]

The owner of a merchant 1,022-MW combined cycle natural gas–fired power plant in California has filed for bankruptcy protection, citing regulatory policies and market forces that have depressed revenues. La Paloma Generating Co. on December 6 filed for U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy, blaming a debt of $524 million that it racked up even though its four-unit […]

Coal, the unchallenged leader in U.S. power generation for most of the past century, may regain its place at the top of the energy mix hierarchy this winter, according to projections released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA’s November Short-Term Energy Outlook suggests that prices for natural gas delivered to the power […]

Plans to repower NRG Energy’s coal-fired 435-MW Dunkirk power plant near Buffalo, N.Y., to natural gas that have been stalled for years owing to a legal challenge may finally be revived. NRG Energy mothballed the four-unit plant in January 2016. The company had filed to mothball the facility nearly four years earlier, in March 2012, […]

Canada’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change on November 21 announced regulatory actions to accelerate the phase-out of coal generation that lacks carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) across the country within the next few decades. The measures announced by Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna are part of a larger transition from “traditional” […]

“We’re at a very challenging time,” said former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Tony Clark at the annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) on November 14. We have a “need for infrastructure, but it’s more difficult to get it sited and built than ever before.” Clark’s comment, which he […]

FirstEnergy Corp.—one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric utilities, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York—has made the strategic decision to exit the competitive power business. “We have made our decision that over the next 12 to 18 months we’re going to exit competitive generation and become a fully […]

Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the U.S. presidential election portends enormous changes in U.S. energy and environmental policy, and a nearly complete turnover of the men and women who will administer that policy for the next four years.

The November 8 election yielded surprising results for controversial energy-related measures in three states. In Florida, voters rejected Amendment 1, a measure backed by utilities to curb the expansion of resident-owned solar rooftop installations. In Washington, the nation’s first state attempt to impose a carbon tax on fossil fuels and power generated from fossil fuels fell […]

TransCanada—a leading North American energy company—has struck deals to sell its U.S. Northeast Power business. LS Power will acquire three principally natural gas–fired power plants and a wind farm from TransCanada, while ArcLight Capital Partners will buy 13 hydropower facilities located in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. “The sale of our merchant U.S. Northeast Power […]

For several years, states in the northeastern U.S. have been in the midst of a major shift away from coal and nuclear power toward natural gas. As aging coal plants shut down on environmental concerns, and several of the region’s nuclear plants have been prematurely retired or faced with challenging economics, developers of natural gas–fired […]

Europe’s first megawatt-size fuel cell went online in September. The 1.4-MW power plant put online by E.ON and FuelCell Energy Solutions in Mannheim, Germany, will provide power over the next 10 years, at least, for production processes of materials specialist FRIATEC. The plant was installed in only nine months as a joint project by E.ON […]

Vattenfall to Convert Berlin Coal Plants to Natural Gas. Sweden’s state-owned power company Vattenfall is phasing out the use of coal in Germany’s capital Berlin. The company on September 28 said it would

FuelCell Energy and ExxonMobil will test a novel fuel cell carbon capture technology at a Southern Co. 2.7-GW coal- and gas-fired power plant in Alabama, the companies said on October 27. The technology under development by the companies uses carbonate fuel cells to concentrate and capture carbon dioxide streams from power plants. A pilot plant […]

Nuclear power’s future—and its much-needed contribution to U.S. decarbonization efforts—may be hampered if eight pressing issues aren’t addressed within the next five years, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said at a recent event held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The issues Moniz outlined in his keynote speech at a six-hour event titled […]

In a major development for a novel carbon capture technology, developers are preparing to commission a 1-MWt oxy-fired pressurized fluidized bed combustion (oxy-PFBC) pilot test facility in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its Canadian counterpart, Natural Resources Canada, commemorated the facility’s construction and commissioning in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on October 18 […]

The Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) will award up to $80 million to a 10-MWe pilot project that seeks to advance the development and commercialization of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton power cycles. The plant will be managed by three research entities: the Gas Technology Institute (GTI), Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), and […]

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) voted unanimously to support Xcel Energy’s latest long-range plan, which will transform the company’s energy fleet. Xcel expects to more than double its renewable energy portfolio as a result, delivering greater than 60% carbon-free energy to its Upper Midwest (Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) customers by […]

Mississippi Power’s integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant in Kemper County, Miss., on October 12 has begun generating its first power using a combination of syngas (produced from locally mined lignite) and natural gas. The milestone is a major one, said Thomas Fanning, CEO of Mississippi Power’s parent company Southern Co. “After decades of research […]

Academics at the University of Sheffield—a public research university in the UK—have begun two new carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, searching for cheaper methods of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil-fueled power plants. The work is being funded by the European Commission’s (EC’s) Horizon 2020 Low Carbon Energy program. Solvents Could Be Game-Changing The […]

Mississippi Power’s integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant under construction in Kemper County, Miss., will likely be placed in service by November 30, a month later than anticipated. The delay will be costly. Mississippi Power reached a new milestone on September 16, announcing that it had started producing syngas using the second gasifier—gasifier “A”—at […]