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The full Senate last week confirmed Ernest Moniz as Energy Secretary while a divided Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) voted 10–8 to send the nomination of Gina McCarthy as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. Republicans agreed to lift their boycott on the McCarthy vote only after the EPA agreed to meet a number of transparency commitments.

Cost overruns of nearly $1 billion to build the 582-MW Kemper integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant in Kemper County, Miss., were underscored on Monday as Mississippi Power’s Board of Directors took the dramatic step of replacing the Southern Co. subsidiary’s leadership.

A carbon tax or cap-and-trade programs could raise trillions of dollars within the first 10 years of their enactment and avert climate change effects, but without accounting for how these revenues will be used, they could take a toll on the U.S. economy, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says in a report released on Tuesday.

Panelists at a House hearing on Tuesday held to examine steps the federal government and private sector are taking to bolster the nation’s critical infrastructure security shed light on the extent and variety of possible cyberattacks and called for flexible solutions. The hearing was held days after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its initial analysis of hundreds of comments submitted in response to President Obama’s February 2013 cybersecurity executive order.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), in a special reliability assessment released on Wednesday, called for a number of changes to address the increased reliance on natural gas for power generation, among them incorporating gas availability and gas supply issues into electric reliability assessments.

A three-judge panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB) on Tuesday ruled that Southern California Edison (SCE) cannot restart Unit 2 of its shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) until the NRC holds a formal license amendment proceeding with full public participation.

Westinghouse and China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. (SNPTC) have teamed to further develop a supply chain within China for power plant equipment and components to be used in global AP1000 nuclear power plants.

A software algorithm developed by researchers from North Carolina State University promises to detect and isolate cyber attacks on networked control systems.

A three-judge panel at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit that alleges carbon dioxide emissions by several power companies contributed to global warming that intensified Hurricane Katrina.

In an apparent legal victory for developers of new nuclear power plants in the U.S., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied complaints from environmental groups that federal approval of Southern Co.’s two new reactors under construction in Georgia did not address lessons learned from the Fukushima accident.