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The U.S. will seek to cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025, the White House said on March 31 in a target submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  The submission—otherwise referred to as an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC)—is a formal statement […]

Copenhagen could inaugurate, as early as 2017, a new combined heat and power plant that features a roof-wide artificial ski slope open to the public and blasts smoke rings through a 124-meter chimney.  The $611 million Amager Bakke plant is owned by five Danish municipalities and is being built by the Copenhagen-based waste management company Amager […]

Stacking perovskites, a crystalline material, onto a conventional silicon solar cell may dramatically improve the overall efficiency of the cell, scientists from Stanford University concluded in a new study. “Right now, silicon solar cells dominate the world market, but the power conversion efficiency of silicon photovoltaics has been stuck at 25% for 15 years,” explained […]

Since the beginning of the U.S. commercial reactor industry, regulatory agencies have required that nuclear power plant designs take into account the potential threats posed by natural hazards such as earthquakes and floods. The tsunami-caused disaster in Japan in 2011 prompted renewed attention worldwide on these hazards. Given the devastation caused at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi […]

Though offshore wind is becoming increasingly important in Europe, with many hundreds-of-megawatts projects in service, the sector has stagnated in the U.S., with no operational facilities—and some

Argentina’s Ministry of Federal Planning in early February signed an agreement with the National Energy Administration of China and China National Nuclear Co. (CNNC) to build Argentina’s fourth nuclear reactor, an 800-MW CANDU design, on the site of the existing Atucha nuclear power plant. Under the agreement, Nucleoeléctrica Argentina—holder of the rights to Canadian CANDU […]

$1.9B Pan-African Renewable Energy Platform Launched. Renewables company Mainstream Renewable Power and private equity firm Actis on Feb. 17 launched a pan-African renewable energy platform dubbed Lekela Power, with ambitions to provide between 700 MW and 900 MW of wind and solar power across Africa by 2018. Mainstream will take responsibility for the full end-to-end […]

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station led the U.S. in electrical generation in 2014, as it has done for 23 consecutive years, with a total output of 32.3 million MWh. That bested its previous record set in 2012. The Palo Verde plant is located about 45 miles west of Phoenix, Ariz. (Figure 5). It has […]

As this month marks the compliance date for the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), it’s a good time to take a step back from the many months of concern and consideration of options to see how coal-fired power plants are actually responding to the new rule. It’s also a good time to acknowledge that […]