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National Steel City (NSC), one of the nation’s leading steel and power industry equipment installation construction companies, is effectively positioned to support the surge in Utility market growth from Natural Gas-Fired projects.
Natural Gas-Fired Generation has been projected to increase by 3 to 4 percent a year for the next 10-plus years. Many of the new

They call themselves “Fractivists.” Environmental and community activists fearful of relatively new natural gas and oil drilling technologies that have transformed the U.S. energy economy have launched a high-profile, highly hyped campaign to shut down new natural gas production. But their prospects of success look dodgy. Ground Zero in the debate over fracking—shorthand for the […]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday granted the nation’s first four Class VI underground injection permits for carbon sequestration to the federally backed FutureGen 2.0 carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS) project.  The Department of Energy formally committed $1 billion to the $1.68 billion project being developed by the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, a coalition of coal producers, users, […]

The European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) under construction in Finland may not start operating until late 2018—putting the project nearly 10 years behind its initial schedule.  Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) said in a statement on Sept. 1 that the AREVA-Siemens consortium building Olkiluoto 3 had updated its schedule. The schedule review, which “has been going […]

On Aug. 28, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) approved an emergency order allowing Florida Power & Light (FPL) to divert water from the district’s L-31E Canal system to help moderate unusually high temperatures and salinity that are occurring in the Turkey Point cooling canal system (CCS). The CCS—an approximately 5,900-acre network of unlined […]

Revised national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for ozone that are expected from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this December will likely be stricter.  Agency staff from the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards in a 597-page final policy assessment released on Aug. 29 recommend revising the standard to within a range of 60 […]

Nearly four years to the day after eight people were killed in a natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, two judges of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ruled on Sept. 2 that Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) must pay a record $1.4 billion in fines and penalties for its role in the disaster. […]

Cybersecurity threats facing the power industry have escalated dramatically in the past few years, as state-sponsored, organized crime, and hacktivist groups all seek to infiltrate U.S. energy infrastructure for cyber-espionage and sabotage purposes. A recent example of the severity of this threat can be seen in operation “Energetic Bear”—a Russian campaign to infect U.S. and […]

The Aug. 4–6 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit shed light on the power plights faced by sub-Saharan African countries, but it also highlighted their massive power potential and the array of solutions under consideration to resolve Africa’s energy crisis. Here are a number of key insights gleaned from discussions at the summit—the first a U.S. president has […]