COAL POWER Direct

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.

In late March, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed its first-ever carbon pollution standard for new power plants, limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new fossil fuel–fired power plants. However, the technology options for complying wiith the proposed rule remain few and expensive, as recent developments demonstrate.

Coal generation, as a percentage of total power output in the U.S., declined steadily to 39% at the end of 2011 from about 51% in 2002, while generation from natural gas–fired combined cycle plants grew to more than 20% from 10% over the same period, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said in late April, as it released its annual assessment for U.S. energy markets.

Two Environmental Protection Agency rules are facing legal challenges. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards is being challenged by half the U.S. states, while a decision in a case concerning the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule could be reached as soon as this summer.

Coal combustion products often can be recycled into a variety of construction and building materials. However, first you must be able to retrieve the wet ash from a holding pond before the ash can be dried and sold.