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Wisconsin Power and Light (WPL) Co. plans to retire three of its oldest and smallest coal-fired generating units and invest $1.4 billion into the company’s generating fleet over the next five years to ensure it will be able to manage "current and emerging environmental regulations," the Alliant Energy Corp. subsidiary announced on Friday.

A lawsuit filed in federal court on Friday by Pennsylvania’s Department of Environment Protection (PDEP) alleges that FirstEnergy’s Little Blue Run Dam coal ash impoundment pond in Beaver County, a facility that stores coal ash from the generator’s 2,470-MW Bruce Mansfield coal-fired power plant in Shippingport, Pa., has leached heavy metals in drinking water supplies and surface water. A proposed consent decree could force the generator to shut down the impoundment facility.

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Thursday announced it would award $7 million to eight projects to advance the development of transformational oxy-combustion technologies capable of high-efficiency, low-cost carbon dioxide capture from coal-fired power plants. Leveraged with recipient cost-sharing to support about $9.4 million in total projects, the awards are expected to support the development and deployment of “carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)” by focusing on further improving the efficiency and reducing the costs associated with carbon capture.

Washington, D.C., 31 July 2012 – What to make of the two successive, horrendous electric power failures in India? The smart money avoids conclusory leaps. When the first cascading blackout hit on Monday, there was much media chatter about generating capacity. The implication was that the outage was demand-driven. But there was nothing particularly unusual […]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released another report on green jobs. According to the BLS, an oil industry lobbyist could be considered as having a green job. The report’s definitions still lack common sense.

Announcements about coal plant retirements have become commonplace. Are new EPA rules completely to blame, or are there other power market pressures at play?

Advanced ultrasupercritical (A-USC) is a term used to designate a coal-fired power plant design with the inlet steam temperature to the turbine at 700C to 760C. In the first two parts of this three-part report, we introduced the A-USC boiler and the metallurgical advancements required for the A-USC boiler to operate at such high temperatures. This final report explores the A-USC boiler’s unique design challenges.

Complying with air emissions rules doesn’t always require construction of a scrubber or SCR. Finely ground trona has proven to be very successful at economically removing SO₃, SO₂, and HCl from stack gases.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on June 26 ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was "unambiguously correct" in its interpretation of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. The federal agency’s endangerment finding that greenhouse gases (GHG), including carbon dioxide, are a threat to public health and welfare, and its decision to set limits for industrial and automotive emissions of GHGs, was "neither arbitrary nor capricious," the court ruled. The court, however, found that it lacked jurisdiction to review the timing and scope of the GHG rules that affect larger stationary sources, including new coal-fired power plants.

In response to a court order, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed updates on June 15 to its national air quality standards for harmful fine particle pollution, including soot (known as PM2.5). The agency says that 99% of U.S. counties are projected to meet proposed standards without any additional actions.