News

South Africa, reeling from a power crisis caused by a lack of generating capacity, on Friday canceled a plan to build a nuclear plant for about $12 billion, saying it was “not in a position to invest in nuclear.”

The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments in Entergy v. EPA, a case that questions an appellate court decision that said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot conduct a cost-benefit analysis in regulating how power plants use cooling water from rivers and lakes. Power companies and the EPA—pitted against environmental groups led by […]

Alstom and Polish company PGE Elektrownia Belchatow S.A. on Monday announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop and implement carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at the 4,440-MW Belchatow power plant in Poland—Europe’s largest conventional power station. In the first phase of the Polish project, Alstom will design and construct a […]

Constellation Energy announced on Monday that its board of directors had authorized the company to begin talks with Électricité de France (EDF), following the French nuclear giant’s unsolicited proposal earlier last week to buy 50% of Constellation’s nuclear generation and operation business for $4.5 billion. The Baltimore company’s board had in mid-September approved an acquisition […]

American Electric Power (AEP) said last week it is evaluating the feasibility of building a multistate, extra-high-voltage transmission project—more than 1,000 miles long—across the Upper Midwest to support the development of renewable energy. The utility has proposed building the first 765-kV extra-high-voltage transmission lines (PDF) to connect major wind developments in the Dakotas and surrounding states […]

TransGas Development Systems LLC (TGDS) plans to build a coal-to-liquids plant in West Virginia, company officials announced yesterday during the West Virginia Energy Summit. The New York–based company filed a permit to build the $3 billion facility in Mingo County. Projected to be operational by 2013, the plant will be built in the region’s new […]

The Scottish government last week outlined criteria and officially launched the grand Saltire Prize Challenge, a marine energy innovation contest to unleash the region’s massive renewable energy potential.

American Electric Power Co. said on Monday that a unit at one of its nuclear power plants damaged in September will not return to full service until 2010. The company also estimated the cost of repairing and replacing the damaged turbine rotors in Cook Nuclear Plant’s Unit 1 at up to $332 million. AEP figures to recover most of the cost through insurance and warranties.

Everyone knows that China is building coal-fired power plants at a furious rate in China, but less well-known are its construction projects abroad, including in India and Indonesia. And on Dec. 1, CIC Energy announced that it had selected China’s power station builder Shanghai Electric Group Co. Ltd. (SEC) to be the EPC contractor for a 1,320-MW power plant at its $3 billion Mmamabula coal mine and electricity generation plant in Botswana.

On the day after Thanksgiving, four federal agencies released a Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Final PEIS) proposing to designate more than 6,000 miles of energy transport corridors on federal lands in 11 western states.