Global Monitor

  • THE BIG PICTURE: Subsidy Tug-of-War

    Government decisions to subsidize renewable power to increase its capacity for environmental and security reasons have spurred investments but also increased cross-border tensions. Increasingly, legal actions that seek to settle international trade disputes allege unfair subsidization.

  • Brazil Drought Threatens Power Supplies

    A pervasive drought in northeast Brazil has dried up power supplies from the region’s hydropower facilities, making the area prone to blackouts and crippling economic growth in one of the country’s emerging agricultural havens.

  • POWER Digest (March 2013)

    Selected business news and deals in the power generation industry.

  • Nations Agree to Legally Binding Instrument to Curb World’s Mercury Emissions

    Mercury emissions from power plants in 137 United Nations member countries could be subject to strict controls and reductions if an international treaty is signed by participating nations this October.

  • Despite Pollution-Curbing Efforts, Dense Smog Covers Wide Swath of China

    Four bouts of dense smog described as the worst air pollution in recent memory enveloped more than half of China in January, from the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei triangle in the north of the country to Nanjing in the south, via the central city of Wuhan.

  • Hungary Inaugurates Subsurface Repository for Nuclear Plant Waste

    Construction of a $310 million repository about 250 meters below Earth’s surface for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste from the operation and future decommissioning of Hungary’s power plants reached a significant milestone at Bataapati.

  • THE BIG PICTURE: Stretching the Pipeline

    Here are some of the longest pipelines recently built as well as noteworthy ones in the pipeline.

  • Japan Banks on LNG

    Japan’s scramble to replace generation lost from nuclear power plants that were shuttered after the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident has forced it to rely on pricey imports of fossil fuels—and soaring energy costs are hammering the world’s third-largest economy.

  • THE BIG PICTURE: Nuclear I&C

    Progress in electronics and information technology has created incentives to replace traditional analog instrumentation and control (I&C) systems in nuclear power plants with digital I&C systems, or systems based on computers and microprocessors. About 40% of the world’s operating reactors have been modernized to include at least some digital I&C systems, according to the International […]

  • First U.S. Ultrasupercritical Power Plant in Operation

    The U.S. saw the historic start of operations at its first ultrasupercritical coal-fired power plant last December as Southwestern Electric Power Co.’s (SWEPCO’s) 600-MW John W. Turk, Jr. Power Plant switched on in Arkansas.