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  • IEA: Coal Boom Is Over

    If broad policy commitments announced by various countries are implemented, coal will not only lose its rank as the dominant fuel for power generation to renewables by 2040, but the world’s coal fleet will be significantly transformed by technology advances, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) newly released World Energy Outlook (WEO-2016) forecasts. Under a baseline […]

  • Mexico Makes Rapid Progress on Energy Reform

    Barely a year after Mexico launched a wholesale market with retail competition as part of a wide-scale reform of its power sector, the country has managed to implement a transparent system that is attracting investment. Mexico has also expanded its grid and deployed notable amounts of renewables that are producing power at unprecedented low prices, […]

  • Market Conditions Force Coal Unit Closures in Australia, Germany

    Difficult market conditions have accelerated the much-hyped closures of a string of coal-fired power units in the U.S., but the phenomenon is extending overseas, gripping plants in Australia and Germany. In the wake of the Paris agreement in December 2015, a number of governments have moved to phase out coal-fired generation. This October, France, which […]

  • POWER Digest

    Japanese Firms Poised to Build Two 540-MW IGCC Plants Based on Nakoso Technology. A consortium of Japanese firms on December 1 said they had received full-turnkey orders for two integrated gasification

  • New England’s Controversial Pipeline Proposal Suffers Severe Setbacks

    Just a few months ago, New England’s biggest and most controversial pipeline proposal, Algonquin Gas Transmission’s Access Northeast project (see “Securing Pipeline Infrastructure for Gas-Fired Generation in New England” in the July 2016 issue), was poised for regulatory scrutiny. Access Northeast distinguished itself by its partnership with electric distribution companies (EDCs), namely National Grid and […]

  • The Power Industry’s Moving Pieces in 2017

    As our January 2017 cover image of a dynamic Rubik’s Cube suggests, the power industry, especially in the U.S., is dealing with something akin to solving a 3-D puzzle whose pieces are being added and subtracted as the game is being played. Although shares of traditional, regulated electric utilities remain some of the most predictable […]

  • U.S. Electric Markets in Transition

    The U.S. market for electricity is trifurcated. More than half the country is served by competitive generators bidding against each other in wholesale markets. Almost half is served by conventional state-regulated, vertically integrated utilities controlling generation and transmission. The rest, a much smaller portion, consists of government-owned and customer-owned utilities, some of which are generators […]

  • A Look Back at 2016: The Year of Transition

    A tumultuous election year that was marked by market turmoil, the events of 2016 clearly showed that big change is afoot for the power sector. Many of POWER‘s bold predictions for 2016, such as that the near-simultaneous surge in U.S. natural gas production and recent enactment of environmental rules would reshape the U.S. power sector, […]

  • Greensmith Adds 130 MW in 2016, Forecasts Key Storage Trends Next Year

    December 20, 2016 10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time EMERYVILLE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Greensmith Energy, the leader in energy storage software and integration, announced 130 megawatts of new energy storage systems in 2016, all powered by the company’s industry-leading software platform, GEMS5. The multi-project year includes the design and delivery of the largest energy storage system in the […]

  • THE BIG PICTURE 2016: The Year in Power Sector Infographics

    POWER‘s monthly infographic sheds light on power sector trends globally, and in 2016, it highlighted water issues, future coal fleet technologies, U.S. power plant retirements, energy storage technologies, China’s power glut, global emissions limits, and more. January 2016: Future Coal Fleet What the world’s future coal fleet will look like by technology. February 2016: GHG […]