News

Two days after NRG Energy flatly rejected Exelon Corp.’s acquisition offer, saying the $6.2 billion proposal “grossly” undervalued the company, Exelon launched a hostile bid for the Princeton, N.J., company, taking its offer directly to NRG shareholders. The U.S. power giant has also filed suit against NRG’s directors, and it has reportedly threatened to expand […]

California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday signed an executive order to clear the red tape for renewable projects and streamline permitting and siting of new plants and transmission lines. The order will speed up that state’s adoption of a mandate to supply 33% of its power from renewable sources by 2020, Schwarzenegger said. California already […]

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) on Thursday approved an agreement that allows a 1.2-mile portion of the controversial 37.2-mile transmission line proposed in that state by the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line Co. (TrAILCo). The commission stayed the rest of Allegheny’s proposal for further consideration. The regulatory body voted 4-1 to adopt a motion (PDF) that […]

After two years of review, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) last week approved a final air permit for the Southwest Electric Power Co.’s (SWEPCO) John W. Turk, Jr. Power Plant. With the permit, construction on the 600-MW coal-fired facility—one of the first U.S. coal plants to use ultrasupercritical technology—will begin immediately in Fulton, […]

If California adopts requirements recommended last month by state agencies to generate at least 33% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, it may cost the state $60 billion, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) said in a report released Thursday. The regulatory agency, which had advocated the 33% renewable standard along with the […]

NRG Energy Inc. on Sunday rejected Exelon Corp.’s $6.08 billion acquisition offer—a merger deal that would have created the single largest power company in the U.S.—saying that the “opportunistically timed proposal grossly undervalues” the company. Stressing that the offer was unsolicited, the company’s board of directors unanimously agreed that Exelon’s Oct. 19 proposal significantly undervalued […]

Maryland’s Public Service Commission (PSC) has ordered the state’s utilities to find ways to generate more power to avoid shortfalls and possible brownouts or blackouts predicted to hit the state between 2011 and 2012. In 2007, and this past May 2008, PJM Interconnection, the region’s grid operator, told the PSC that Maryland could face electricity shortages—and […]

The Department of Energy is hoping to expand the capacity of the $90 billion Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada—a facility that President-elect Barack Obama has consistently said he opposes—instead of building a second repository, The New York Times reported last week. Edward F. Sproat III, director of the DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive […]

British Petroleum (BP) has reportedly withdrawn all plans to build wind farms and other renewable projects in the UK, and it has dropped out of a government competition to build a carbon capture and storage plant. The Guardian reports that the company will instead concentrate its $8 billion renewable program on the U.S., attracted to […]

Widespread efforts aimed at reducing carbon emissions and increasing the use of renewables for the generation of electricity will fundamentally determine the future course of electric reliability across North America, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) said in a recently released report. “We are concerned that, when viewed from a continent-wide perspective, current climate […]