Latest

Canadian Hydro Developers last week agreed to buy the rights to a proposed 4,440-MW offshore wind project—what could possibly be the largest offshore wind facility in the world—in Lake Erie from Utah-based Wasatch Wind, but the company later acknowledged that the Ontario government had not yet granted it the rights to build the farm.

Alcoa Power Generating (APGI) has countered North Carolina’s alleged efforts to seize its privately owned hydropower business along the Yadkin River by filing a formal response with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the company said on Tuesday.

A pilot project begun at NRG Energy’s 1,700-MW Big Cajun II power plant will evaluate local conditions for growing switchgrass and high-biomass sorghum and determine if they could replace a portion of the plant’s combusted coal to reduce its carbon intensity. The project could lead to commercial-scale projects that would substitute biomass for some of the coal burned at NRG’s other carbon-intensive plants, the company said last week.

Twelve U.S. carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects will be the first to receive grants from the $1.4 billion allocated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Energy Department said on Friday.

In this column last month I quoted Indian Environmental Minister Jairam Ramesh to represent India’s intention to not agree to any legally binding emissions targets at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December. That conference will start formal negotiations of a follow-on agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. A number of readers wrote to say that they believe India and China, despite their protestations to the contrary, will cave to international pressure and at the end of the day agree to some binding carbon emissions limits. I disagree.

News items of interest to industry professionals.

When high-temperature boiler feedwater passes through a control valve, the pressure drop can exceed several thousand pounds per square inch, placing extreme stress on the valve body and internal parts. If those parts are not engineered and manufactured to the highest industry standards, there is a very real possibility of the severe conditions damaging or destroying the valve.

For several years there has been widespread doubt about Washington’s ability to move forward with a national program to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At various times during the Bush administration, it appeared that legislation might be possible, but it always collapsed under the weight of partisan politics and competing special […]

When TVA’s Bull Run Fossil Plant was erected in the mid-1960s, it could boast of having the largest boiler in the U.S., and the plant has enjoyed a long, enviable efficiency track record. Today the public judges coal plants by their emissions. Now that it’s been outfitted with the most advanced air quality control systems, including the latest flue gas desulfurization system design, Bull Run scores a perfect "10" in both categories.

Hirakud Power uses environmentally friendly circulating fluidized bed (CFB) combustion technology to produce electricity for one of the world’s oldest aluminum-smelting operations. This "captive power plant" has engineered a number of technical fixes to its original boiler designs to improve plant reliability and reduce outages and boiler repair costs. It also has made strategic investments in upgraded machinery to reduce auxiliary power consumption. In addition to an excellent environmental track record, as evidenced by being Asia’s first ISO 14001 (BS 7750) – certified power plant, Hirakud Power has solidified its position as an industry leader in CFB boiler operating experience and efficient power production.