News

The Energy Department on Tuesday issued a Record of Decision (ROD) that could allow $450 million of federal funding to be used to help build Summit Texas Clean Eneryg’s 400-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant planned for construction just west of Midland-Odessa,Texas.

Dominion, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Virginia Tech, Alstom Power, and maritime engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol last week received a two-year $500,000 grant from the DOE to seek out ways to reduce the cost of offshore wind generation by at least 25%.

Progress Energy Carolinas will officially shut down its 177-MW coal-fired W.H. Weatherspoon Power Plant near Lumberton, N.C., at the end of the month—the first such retirement under the utility’s fleet-modernization program that includes disassembly of nearly 30% of the firm’s coal generating fleet in North Carolina.

A new standard devised by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in response to the February 2010 Kleen Energy Systems power plant explosion prohibits the use of flammable gas as a cleaning agent for cleaning the interior of pipes—the practice thought to have caused the blast that killed six workers in Middletown, Conn., and injured nearly 50 others.

In a major development, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Office of the Inspector General (IG) today said a key document underpinning the agency’s so-called “endangerment finding”—the determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and legally supports agency rules that regulate carbon dioxide emissions—required a “more rigorous peer review than occurred.”

Just two weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew its smog rule, the agency on Thursday confirmed it would not meet a Sept. 30, 2011, deadline for issuing proposed New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new, modified, and existing power plants. The agency did not specify a new deadline for proposing the rule.

The installed cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the U.S. plunged 17% in 2010 compared to the year before, and by an additional 11% within the first six months of 2011, a new report from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Thursday said 27 rural electric cooperative utilities would receive $603 million in loans for generation and transmission projects, distribution facilities, and smart grid technologies. The loans are expected to finance rural electric utility improvements in 18 states.

The U.S. House of Representatives could by Friday vote on a measure that could delay the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) implementation of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and the recently proposed utility MACT rule by more than a year.

Kansas on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), challenging new regulations that the state says will require utilities to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in new emissions control equipment before Jan. 1, 2012— a timeline the state’s utilities say is impossible to meet

Duke-American Transmission Co. (DATC) is moving ahead with plans to fill gaps in the existing grid first set, unveiling seven new transmission line projects in five Midwestern states last week. These projects will improve electric system reliability and market efficiency, and provide economic benefits to local utilities, Duke’s transmission arm said.

World electricity generation is projected to increase 84% from 19.1 trillion kWh in 2008 to 35.2 trillion kWh in 2035—growth that will be driven by increasing demand in developing countries, the Energy Information Agency’s (EIA’s) recently released International Energy Outlook 2011 shows. Much of this growth will be from renewables and natural gas, though coal generation will also increase in developing countries, and particularly, in China and India.

In a Congressional hearing last week, commissioners from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Public Utility Commissions of several states differed in their views of just how many coal plants could be shut down and how this may affect grid reliability if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implements several rules it has already finalized or proposed.

Dominion Virginia Power last week told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that hundreds of tests and inspections have revealed no damage to safety-related equipment at the company’s North Anna Power Station from the Aug. 23 5.8-magnitude quake whose epicenter was only five miles away from the twin-reactor station in Mineral, Va.

Pennsylvania has reportedly withdrawn from five federal environmental lawsuits filed during former Gov. Ed Randell’s (D) administration, including four cases the state joined last year supporting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) “endangerment” rule and a 2008 federal suit challenging the EPA’s 2008 smog rules as too lenient.

The Department of Energy (DOE) last week said it was considering transferring to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) its authority to conduct congestion studies and establish a process for designating “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors” (NIETCs). But the move, which has been touted as a means to remove transmission-development barriers, could inhibit new power lines by creating uncertainty, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has countered.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday split 2–2, neither upholding nor rejecting a decision by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) last year that had ruled the Energy Department could not withdraw its license application for the Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear waste repository in Nevada. In a written decision, however, the NRC directed its licensing board to close out work on the project by Sept. 30, citing funding constraints.

New Hampshire’s State Senate last week fell one vote short of overriding Gov. John Lynch’s veto of a bill that would have withdrawn the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program whose participants include 10 states and provinces in the northeastern U.S. and Canada.

Just days after an investigation was launched into failed solar manufacturer Solyndra, a Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee recipient—the DOE announced a flurry of funding measures for new solar, offshore wind, and geothermal projects. The new projects will help achieve President Obama’s goal of generating 80% of U.S. power from clean energy within the next 25 years, the DOE said.

Along with several funding announcements for renewable energy projects, the Department of Energy (DOE) last week said it would back six projects that could lower the cost of producing power in integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants using carbon capture. The $14 million in total funding will seek to improve the economics of IGCC plants and promote the use of the nation’s abundant coal resources, the DOE said.

Shifting from coal to natural gas would have limited impacts on climate—and it could even slightly accelerate global warming at least through 2050—suggests a new study from the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Dallas-based Luminant, Texas’ largest power generator, on Friday filed a legal challenge against the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) but said the newly finalized rule that will require generators to dramatically reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants had forced it to idle two coal-fired units and reduce capacity at three other units. The decision follows talks between the company and the EPA, in which the agency suggested the closures are not the “only path forward.”

A worker was killed and four people were injured at EDF’s Centraco site near the Marcoule nuclear research center in Codolet, Southeast France, on Monday when a furnace dedicated to melting scrap metal from nuclear plants exploded and triggered a fire.

President Obama on Friday scuttled the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) smog rule, saying that he had underscored the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty. The decision has dealt a blow to environmental groups—which are contemplating legal action—and won the Democratic president praise from Republicans and industry groups.

Solyndra, the manufacturer of cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels, which had been granted the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) first ever loan guarantee funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, on Tuesday filed for bankruptcy protection. The move follows the California company’s decision last week to shut down its Fremont factory and lay off 1,100 employees and contractors because it could not compete with low-cost manufacturers from other countries.

Louisiana-based engineering firm the Shaw Group on Tuesday said it would sell its 20% stake in nuclear plant company Westinghouse back to partner Toshiba—forcing the Japanese company to raise its holding to 87%. Shaw said it would continue to work as a consortium team member with Westinghouse in the deployment and commercialization of the third-generation AP1000 reactor currently under construction in China and the state of Georgia.

Analysis from research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan shows that the steam and gas turbines market in Europe—which has seen an all-time low in the past two years—is expected to pick up in the medium-to-long term, even though the sector has been hard-hit by uncertainties concerning carbon trading, power industry legislation, and commodity price surges.

All nuclear plants in the U.S. continued to operate safely, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said as it announced it had issued mid-cycle assessment letters to the nation’s 104 operating commercial nuclear plants.

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Thursday awarded more than $145 million for 69 projects in 24 states to help shape the next generation of solar energy technologies as part of its SunShot Initiative. That announcement was followed yesterday by one concerning funding for a more established renewable power generation technology. The DOE and Department of the Interior announced nearly $17 million in funding over the next three years for research and development projects to advance hydropower technology.

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) last week signed into law a bill that extends an expedited permitting process previously limited to large-scale solar projects to wind and geothermal projects planned for installation in California’s Mojave and Colorado Deserts.