COAL POWER Direct

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 […]

Without some serious progress on improving its infrastructure and market structure, New England is facingchallenges to reliability with its increased reliance on natural gas, says the head of ISO-NE.

A divided three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently rejected Oklahoma State’s challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) implementation of a regional haze rule to limit emissions from power plants in the state.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has upheld an earlier district court decision that Clean Air Act liabilities do not transfer to new owners when a facility is sold, while the Third Circuit has upheld an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule to limit sulfur dioxide emissions from a Pennsylvania coal-fired power plant on request of New Jersey, a downwind state.

American Electric Power (AEP) has opted to retire—instead of refueling with natural gas—its 585-MW coal-fired Muskingum River Plant Unit 5 in Beverly, Ohio, in 2015.

At the average coal-fired power plant, the battle to reduce net heat rate is complicated by skin-tight maintenance budgets, staff reductions, and—for some—the switch from baseload to mid-peaking service. The most fruitful approach to improving a plant’s heat rate is to optimize combustion in its boiler, particularly by minimizing the amount of “stealth” air in-leakage.