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The Energy Department on Tuesday issued a Record of Decision (ROD) that could allow $450 million of federal funding to be used to help build Summit Texas Clean Eneryg’s 400-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant planned for construction just west of Midland-Odessa,Texas.

Dominion, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Virginia Tech, Alstom Power, and maritime engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol last week received a two-year $500,000 grant from the DOE to seek out ways to reduce the cost of offshore wind generation by at least 25%.

Progress Energy Carolinas will officially shut down its 177-MW coal-fired W.H. Weatherspoon Power Plant near Lumberton, N.C., at the end of the month—the first such retirement under the utility’s fleet-modernization program that includes disassembly of nearly 30% of the firm’s coal generating fleet in North Carolina.

A new standard devised by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in response to the February 2010 Kleen Energy Systems power plant explosion prohibits the use of flammable gas as a cleaning agent for cleaning the interior of pipes—the practice thought to have caused the blast that killed six workers in Middletown, Conn., and injured nearly 50 others.

In a major development, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Office of the Inspector General (IG) today said a key document underpinning the agency’s so-called “endangerment finding”—the determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and legally supports agency rules that regulate carbon dioxide emissions—required a “more rigorous peer review than occurred.”

The U.S. House of Representatives could by Friday vote on a measure that could delay the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) implementation of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and the recently proposed utility MACT rule by more than a year.

Kansas on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), challenging new regulations that the state says will require utilities to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in new emissions control equipment before Jan. 1, 2012— a timeline the state’s utilities say is impossible to meet

Duke-American Transmission Co. (DATC) is moving ahead with plans to fill gaps in the existing grid first set, unveiling seven new transmission line projects in five Midwestern states last week. These projects will improve electric system reliability and market efficiency, and provide economic benefits to local utilities, Duke’s transmission arm said.

World electricity generation is projected to increase 84% from 19.1 trillion kWh in 2008 to 35.2 trillion kWh in 2035—growth that will be driven by increasing demand in developing countries, the Energy Information Agency’s (EIA’s) recently released International Energy Outlook 2011 shows. Much of this growth will be from renewables and natural gas, though coal generation will also increase in developing countries, and particularly, in China and India.

In a Congressional hearing last week, commissioners from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Public Utility Commissions of several states differed in their views of just how many coal plants could be shut down and how this may affect grid reliability if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implements several rules it has already finalized or proposed.