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Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) and the Arkansas Public Service Commission (APSC) on Tuesday asked the Arkansas Supreme Court for a rehearing, after the high court last month overturned a 2007 permit awarded by the PSC to the utility’s 600-MW John W. Turk, Jr. power plant. SWEPCO said that it plans to continue construction of the $1.7 billion project—the nation’s first ultrasupercritical coal plant—to meet its commitments to serve the company’s customers in three states.

CMS Energy subsidiary Consumers Energy last week announced that it is deferring the development of an 830-MW coal-fired power plant planned for Hampton Township. State regulators had last year approved an air permit for the $2 billion-plus project on the condition that it use stringent emission controls and that it was ready for carbon capture and sequestration when the technology was feasible.

Mississippi Power Co. on Thursday said it would proceed with plans to build a 582-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant as proposed in Kemper County after the Mississippi Public Service Commission (MPSC) relaxed restrictions it had placed on the project.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Friday dismissed without rehearing, on procedural grounds, a controversial climate change “public nuisance” case in which 14 individuals had filed a class-action lawsuit against insurance, coal, and chemical companies, seeking relief for property damages resulting from Hurricane Katrina.

Depressed power demand due to a slow economic recovery will continue to be a major driver affecting bulk power system reliability during the summer months, the North American Reliability Corp. (NERC) said last week in its annual summer reliability assessment report.

Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, trusts the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report’s conclusions that anthropogenic carbon emissions are the primary cause of climate change. When pressed, the customary response of Browner and other proponents has been to rely on that oft-cited list of 2,500 scientists said to have given their full support of the report’s conclusions. Browner should check her facts.

New York regulators in April approved construction of a 20-MW energy storage system at the site of an operating coal-fired power station near Union, Broome County. When operational, the $22.3 million project, owned by AES ES Westover LLC—an AES Corp. subsidiary—will use the technology to participate in New York’s growing day-ahead market for ancillary services and regulation.

After more than a decade of debate, in April, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved Cape Wind, a proposed 130-turbine offshore wind farm for Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts. It would be the first wind facility in U.S. waters. Despite remaining hurdles, the approval marks a shift in political winds for the nation’s fledgling industry, and it could spur further development of projects proposed for relatively shallow waters along the East Coast and in the Great Lakes.

One indication that the world’s offshore wind sector is poised to soar is the escalating competition between turbine makers. This April, General Electric (GE)—the world’s second-largest manufacturer of wind turbines—announced it would introduce a 4-MW gearless wind turbine (a design requiring no gearbox between turbine and generator) in 2012. The move directly challenges market leader Siemens Energy, of Germany, and its head-to-head competitor, Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems.

Finland’s government in April approved two of three proposals for the construction of new nuclear reactors in an effort to rid the country of its dependency on electricity imports from other countries—especially Russia—as well as to decrease carbon emissions.