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  • Poll: Americans Are Not Too Worried About Climate Change, Still Favor Solar, Wind, and Nuclear

    A Gallup poll completed last month found that only 32% of adults in the U.S. worry a “great deal” about global warming or climate change, while 45% worry “only a little” or “not at all.” The survey was taken via telephone interviews conducted during the first week of March using a random sample of 1,025 […]

  • Material Inconsistencies Acknowledged in Nuclear Reactor Vessel Head and Bottom

    More trouble has been reported at one of the four European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) units currently under construction. AREVA announced on April 7 that chemical and mechanical testing conducted on a reactor vessel head and bottom similar to that of the Flamanville EPR (a 1,630-MW unit under construction on the west coast of the […]

  • Power Cuts Affect Wide Swath of D.C., Including the White House, Capitol

    A dip in voltage prompted temporary power cuts to the White House, Capitol Hill, the State Department, and other parts of Washington, D.C., on Tuesday afternoon.  D.C. utility PEPCO said in a statement that the disturbance that affected about 8,000 customers and left a wide swath  of the nation’s capital in the dark was caused […]

  • SunEdison Procures 100 MW of Storage for Indian Minigrids

    Renewable energy development company SunEdison announced on Mar. 25 that it had agreed to purchase up to 1,000 vanadium redox flow batteries totaling more than 100 MW of storage capacity from Imergy Power Systems to be used for community minigrid projects in India. SunEdison, which has an equity stake in Imergy, in January received financing […]

  • White House Formally Submits Climate Pledge to Slash GHGs

    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 […]

  • A Smoke-Ring Blowing Power Plant. April Fools? You Tell Us.

    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 […]

  • POWER Digest

    $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 […]

  • Palo Verde Nuclear Station Sets U.S. Production Record

    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 […]

  • The State of U.S. Mercury Control in Response to MATS

    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 […]