POWERnews

The U.S. House voted 422–0 last week, approving a bill that could facilitate the development of small hydropower and conduit projects and direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to consider streamlining its two-year permitting process.

Two bills seeking to rapidly expand geothermal energy resources in the U.S. were reintroduced in the Senate last week.

Members of the Mississippi House passed a pair of rate mitigation and securitization bills that would allow the Mississippi Public Service Commission (MPSC) to approve a multiyear rate plan for Mississippi Power’s $2.88 billion Kemper integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant that is under construction in Kemper County.

The U.S. last week called for World Trade Organization (WTO) consultations to settle a dispute in which it alleges that India’s national solar program appears to discriminate against U.S. solar equipment by requiring solar energy producers in the South Asian country to use Indian-made solar cells and modules.

A legal battle is brewing between the Department of the Interior (DOI) and three public-interest environmental groups that claim the government failed to consider degraded lands for the siting of "destructive" utility-scale solar plants, and that it focused instead on millions of acres of public land when it established solar energy zones in six southwestern states.

An EPR reactor under construction by an AREVA-Siemens consortium in Finland may not start operating until 2016, two years later than its revised start date in 2014, Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) said on Monday. Construction of the Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) unit began in May 2005, and the new possible start date could put it eight years behind its initial schedule.

Nine Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) will see a 45% lowering of the market-based regulatory program’s carbon dioxide (CO₂) cap in 2014, under an updated model rule released last week. The change is expected to reduce projected 2020 power sector CO₂ emissions from the region to more than 45% below those in 2005.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday began accepting comments on its draft Climate Change Adaption Plan, a document that seeks to integrate climate change considerations into future programs and regulations.

President Obama outlined a number of key energy-related measures in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, urging Congress to pursue legislation to mitigate climate change and calling for an expansion of clean energy and reduced red-tape for natural gas and oil permits.

President Obama on Tuesday signed a highly anticipated executive order that lays out the administration’s cybersecurity plans to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure. Portions of the order would be welcomed by the energy sector, but others raised potential concerns, experts said.

The beleaguered Crystal River Nuclear Plant in Citrus County, Fla.—which has been in shutdown and offline since late 2009 due to damage to its containment building—is to be retired, Progress Energy Florida announced on Tuesday.

In a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, state utility regulators and nuclear utilities rejected claims in a recent Department of Energy (DOE) filing that Nuclear Waste Fund fees were necessary, and they called on the court to temporarily suspend the fees.

Citing low natural gas prices, Duke Energy announced on Feb. 1 that it would shutter its 1920s-built Buck and Riverbend stations two years before the coal-fired plants were slated for retirement. The company had chosen to retire the plants just before April 2015, which is the compliance deadline for recently enacted federal environmental rules.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu ended weeks of speculation by announcing that he will not serve a second term in the Obama administration. In his Feb. 1 announcement, Chu said, “In the short term, I plan to stay on as Secretary past the ARPA-E Summit at the end of February. I may stay beyond that time so that I can leave the Department in the hands of the new Secretary.”

New analysis by the World Resources Institute (WRI) finds that the U.S. is not on track to reach its goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 17% by 2020 (below 2005 levels) but that it has the tools to get there. Specifically, the report looks at steps the Obama Administration and states can take without congressional action. Those steps would, not surprisingly, require emissions reductions from existing power plants and natural gas systems.

An energy blueprint released on Monday by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the ranking minority member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, calls for complete independence from OPEC oil by 2020.

Criticism from Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Rep. David McKinley (R-W.V.) has reportedly prompted the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to revise a December 2012 report in which it found coal ash bills sponsored by the lawmakers would not guarantee the protection of human health and the environment.

Sally Jewell, who has been CEO of REI, a privately held outdoor recreation gear retail corporation organized as a consumers’ cooperative, has been nominated as the next secretary of the interior, the White House announced on Wednesday.

FutureGen 2.0, a government-backed project that involves the upgrade of a coal-fired power plant in Meredosia, Ill., with oxy-combustion technology to capture 90% of that plant’s carbon emissions and then sequester them underground, has entered its second phase, the Department of Energy (DOE) said on Monday.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) imposition of a federal implementation plan (FIP) to curb regional haze that could force coal-fired power plants in Arizona to install $1 billion in pollution controls was challenged by the state in federal court last week.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last week declined petitions for rehearing en banc of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). The federal court’s denial of the petitions leaves in place the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR)—a Bush-era rule that the court had formerly invalidated in July 2008 and then reinstated. It also could prompt environmental groups, 15 states, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mississippi regulators last week approved a settlement with Mississippi Power that will allow the Southern Co. subsidiary to seek higher customer rates for rising costs associated with its 582-MW Kemper integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant under construction in Kemper County. On the day following that ruling, the utility asked the state for permission to recover $172 million for the 2013 regulatory year.

A settlement agreement reached with environmental group the Sierra Club last week may mean that Iowa’s largest utility, MidAmerican Energy Co., will switch 674 MW of coal-fired capacity to natural gas or other fuels by April 2016.

Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) Industry Alliance last week announced that it had received a $1 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a 50/50 cost-shared contract to continue business and economic analysis for using high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technologies (HTGR).

The UK’s process to site a deep geological repository for radioactive waste in West Cumbria screeched to a halt on Wednesday after the Cumbria County Council’s Cabinet decided that the region should no longer be considered as a potential location to host the facility, even though the local government of the borough of Copeland voted in favor of the plans.

A German tax court on Tuesday ruled that the country’s excise tax on nuclear fuel levied since January 2011 is unconstitutional and lacks legal competence. The matter now proceeds to the Federal Constitutional Court, which alone has the jurisdiction to rule on the invalidity of the law.

A year after the beleaguered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) was shut down owing to issues identified in the steam generator tubes of the plant’s two units, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced tentative milestones for its independent review. The federal agency now projects that a possible decision regarding restart of Unit 2 could come in late April.

Average spot natural gas prices in New England have surged to $3 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) higher than natural gas prices at the Henry Hub since November, driven up by supply constraints from natural gas pipelines that haven’t kept up with demand, high international prices, and declining production in eastern Canada, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says in a report released last week.

Development of a $3.2 billion circulating fluidized bed (CFB) petroleum coke–fired power plant proposed for construction in Corpus Christi, Texas, was suspended last week. Chase Power Development, parent company of the 1,300-MW Las Brisas Energy Center, cited market conditions and regulatory obstacles for its decision.

A federal court on Tuesday ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exceeded its authority when it established a screening tool that could allow some new power plants to be exempted from certain requirements under the EPA’s October 2010-finalized rule aimed at curbing emissions of particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter.