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In a clear sign of growing industry unease about the availability of water for power plant operations, utility officials recently surveyed by Black & Veatch on a host of policy and business issues ranked water supply as their second-highest environmental concern and identified water management as the business issue that could have the greatest impact on the utility industry in the near future.

The European Union has adopted a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system as part of its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Beginning January 2012, aircraft flight engines will be added to the emissions sources regulated by the ETS. A Solutions Fellow at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change believes these regulations are an important step in regulating carbon emissions. You be the judge.

Why should utilities consider converting existing coal-fired plants to burn gas? We explore the rationale for fuel switching, some of the options available for the conversion of coal-fired units, technical considerations related to conversion, and some of the financial considerations that will impact the final decision.

Proponents of carbon dioxide emission reductions from power plants are lamenting the decision by American Electric Power to cancel the carbon capture and sequestration plant at its Mountaineer facility in West Virginia. It’s not politics, it’s just business.

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) finalized an order last Thursday that it says reforms its transmission planning and cost allocation requirements “to benefit consumers by enhancing the grid’s ability to support wholesale power markets and ensuring transmission services are provided at just and reasonable rates.”

South Carolina state-owned utility Santee Cooper last week said it had separately signed letters of intent with Duke Energy Carolinas and Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA) to negotiate partnerships in the two new nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station that Santee Cooper is planning with South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Tuesday it would not issue a reconsideration of the Bush administration’s ozone standard by the July 29 deadline, but it will finalize the standard “shortly.”

Entergy Corp. on Monday said it would move forward with fabrication of fuel and refueling of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant this October—even though the New Orleans–based company will then be embroiled in a federal court trial against the state of Vermont. The state is determined to shut down the nuclear plant as soon as a Legislature-approved permit expires in March 2012.

Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) on Monday said it has settled a series of lawsuits and other actions brought forth by an assortment of groups opposing construction of the 600-MW John W. Turk., Jr. power plant—the nation’s first ultrasupercritical pulverized coal power plant.

Fourteen of the European Union’s (EU’s) 27 member states that operate nuclear power plants must draw up national programs for the management of spent nuclear fuel—including concrete timetables and cost assessments—and submit them to the European Commission by 2015, at the latest, under a new EU directive adopted last week.