News

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week voted to approve interpretive guidance that calls for disclosure of climate-related business risks. These include the anticipated impact of climate change on assets and financial risks associated with compliance costs for existing and pending regulations.

The Brazilian government granted an environmental license to the controversial 11,000-MW Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon rainforest on Monday in hopes that the $17 billion project will help the country cope with growing demand.

President Barack Obama emphasized the role of nuclear power, offshore oil and gas exploration, and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) in his first State of the Union speech last week. The proposed $28.4 billion Fiscal Year 2011 budget for the Energy Department released by the White House this week could provide a much-needed boost to these and other measures.

The first six of a dozen high-capacity turbines were commissioned in mid-December at the 60-MW Alpha Ventus project in the North Sea, Germany’s first offshore wind park. All 12 turbines of the €250 million project are already standing, put up in just seven months by a consortium of EWE, E.ON, and Vattenfall — formally known as Deutsche Offshore Testfeld und Infrastruktur (DOTI).

More than 60 floating power stations are in operation around the world, deploying some 4 GW at continental shores where electricity is most needed. Though these feature a variety of power sources (including nuclear, gas, and heavy fuels), most are power barges — they do not have their own propulsion systems and would have to be towed to desired locations.

High-voltage direct current transmission (HVDC) has come a long way since 1882 when the first of its type carried power from Miesbach in Bavaria to an electricity exhibition in Munich, 57 kilometers (km) away, at a mere 1,400 V. Last December, just before the world ushered in the new decade, Siemens Energy and grid operator China Southern Power Grid put into operation the first pole of a transmission link between the southern Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Guangdong, a 1,418-km ultra-high-voltage direct current (UHVDC) system. That line has a transmission capacity of 5 GW, and it operates at a voltage of 800 kilovolts (kV) — a world record.

News items of interest to power generation professionals.

California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) in late November issued the nation’s first blueprint for a broad-based cap-and-trade program to control greenhouse gases (GHG). If they take effect in 2012 as proposed, the regulations in ARB’s preliminary draft will apply to 605 of the state’s largest stationary GHG emitters, including power plants and industries, as well as electricity imports. Starting in 2015, the regulations will also apply to fuel suppliers and smaller stationary GHG emitters such as homes and commercial businesses.

The way our lungs separate and capture carbon dioxide from blood could be key to isolating emissions of the greenhouse gas in order to store them safely underground.

Scientists from Germany and India say they have developed a new polymer that reduces the amount of radioactive waste produced during routine operation of nuclear reactors. The approach uses small beads of the material to "fish" out radioactivity from water pumped through the reactor’s core.