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The Supreme Court of the state of Kansas last week invalidated a controversial air pollution permit granted in 2010 by state regulators to Sunflower Electric Power Corp.’s proposed 895-MW coal-fired Holcomb 2 plant. The court ruled in favor of environmental group the Sierra Club, which claimed that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) erroneously […]

Courtesy: Dominion Curt Morgan, CEO and president of Brayton Point Energy LLC, announced in a written statement on Oct. 7, 2013, that the Brayton Point Power Station will be closed permanently in 2017. The news comes as a bit of a surprise, since the station was recently purchased by a subsidiary of funds controlled by […]

Abengoa’s Solana solar thermal plant, the world’s largest parabolic trough concentrating solar power (CSP) plant and the first in the U.S. with thermal energy storage, began commercial operations on Monday. The 280-MW plant, near Gila Bend in Arizona about 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, employs molten salt to store about six hours of thermal energy […]

While many people believe coal is incompatible with meeting the challenge of climate change, the World Coal Association (WCA) disagrees. Together with the Polish Ministry of Economy, the WCA has developed “The Warsaw Communiqué” to address steps that can be taken to tackle climate change and allow coal to continue to play its role as […]

In the past two years, roughly half of U.S. coal production was attributable to the top four coal producers, the result, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), of changes in regional production as well as decades-long trends that have seen the several mergers and acquisitions. Peabody Energy Corp., Arch Coal Inc., Alpha Natural […]

With the recent push for the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from new and existing power plants (see “Turning the Heat Up on Carbon Emissions” in the October 2013 issue of POWER), the science behind this action needs to be revisited. The regulation of carbon dioxide emissions will apply to all fossil fuel energy sources; […]

Electric power production from coal is on a steep rise in major developing countries, including China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Vietnam, albeit declining in developed countries such as the United States. Shortfalls in coal production have been reported in some of these countries, but these issues are being addressed by increasing coal production, as […]

In a letter to President Obama on Monday, former Colorado Public Utility Commissioner Ron Binz withdrew his name from further consideration as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). His nomination proved to be highly controversial and was met with resistance by many members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. In […]

A federal court on Monday said it would issue a memorandum opinion by the end of this month on a lawsuit filed by several environmental groups to force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to promulgate a final coal ash rule. At least 11 environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean […]

“Abnormally wet weather” and “lower-than-planned construction labor productivity” have forced Mississippi Power to push back commercial startup of its integrated coal gasification combined cycle (IGCC) project in Kemper County, Miss., to later in 2014 from the originally scheduled in-service date of May 2014. The company said in a stock filing on Tuesday that it would […]