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The FutureGen Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of coal producers, coal users, and coal equipment suppliers, on Monday said it was negotiating an option to buy portions of the Meredosia Energy Center in Illinois from Ameren Corp. to continue development of the FutureGen 2.0 carbon capture and storage project, an initiative begun in 2003.

Illinois’ Senate on Tuesday revived Tenaska’s plan to build its $3.5 billion Taylorville Energy Center (TEC), a 602-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant designed to capture more than 50% of its carbon emissions.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday blocked two key bills proposed by Republicans that would have thwarted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from promulgating rules they say are unrealistic and would harm the economy. One measure was Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) resolution to disapprove the EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), and the other was Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) bill that would have required agencies to get congressional approval for federal rules that cost more than $100 million.

A Minnesota administrative judge on Thursday backed a $489 million plan to retrofit the 36-year-old coal-fired Big Stone power plant in South Dakota with an air quality control system (AQCS) rather than scrap the plant.

The California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC’s) approval on Thursday of Abengoa Solar’s 250-MW Mojave Solar concentrating solar power (CSP) parabolic trough facility in San Bernardino County—the second “overpriced renewable contract” approved by the CPUC in recent weeks—was disappointing, the regulatory commission’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) said in a statement.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday issued the first greenhouse gas (GHG) permit in Texas. The move comes nearly a year after Texas refused to implement federal GHG regulations that require air permits for high-emission projects and the EPA seized the state’s authority to grant permits.

Power costs from onshore wind turbines are expected to plunge 12% over the next five years due to the availability of lower-cost equipment and gains in output efficiency—and, in areas offering fair wind conditions, this could make wind power “fully competitive” with power produced from combined cycle gas turbines by 2016, new research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows.

Dominion Virginia Power on Friday began the restart of North Anna Power Station after garnering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) permission and more than two months of inspections, testing and engineering, and seismic analysis to investigate effects of the Aug. 23 5.8-magnitude quake whose epicenter was only about 11 miles away from the company’s twin-reactor station in Mineral, Va.

A survey of 50 energy experts released on Tuesday by economists at The Brattle Group reveals that energy efficiency is likely to cause a drop of 5% to 15% in U.S. electricity consumption by the year 2020, relative to forecast trends. Electric peak demand is likely to drop by 7.5% to 15% and natural gas consumption is expected to drop by 5% to 10% compared to forecast trends.

A plan to build a controversial $4.7 billion coal-fired power plant in Scotland’s Ayrshire County that would have been fitted with experimental carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology was last week thrown out by the North Ayrshire Council, and citizens lodged more than 20,000 objections with the legislative body.