POWERnews

The week brought news of more closures or cancellations related to coal-fired generation. Exelon Corp. said it would permanently shut down four older units—a total capacity of 933 MW—in Pennsylvania; Progress Energy announced the closure of 11 North Carolina units in a shift to burning natural gas; and cost increases for an Ohio plant are prompting American Municipal Power to consider a combined-cycle gas plant instead.

An analysis released today by the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) projects that if Congress adopts climate change legislation based on a blueprint released by the organization earlier this year, the nation’s economy would grow about 70% through 2030 despite adopting carbon emission–curbing measures.

On Monday, a number of leading U.S. business executives ─ including Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO of Nissan Motor Company; David W. Crane, president and CEO of NRG Energy; and Frederick W. Smith, chairman, president, and CEO of FedEx Corporation ─ convened to announce the formation of the Electrification Coalition. The coalition describes itself as  a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization committed to promoting policies and actions that will facilitate the deployment of electric vehicles on a mass scale in order to combat the economic, environmental, and national security vulnerabilities caused by our nation’s dependence on petroleum.

Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) on Monday introduced a climate and energy bill that proposes to spend $20 billion over the next 20 years to fund a series of nuclear-oriented provisions. These include nuclear loan guarantees, workforce development, and reactor-lifetime extensions.

The current sluggish U.S. economy is now being reflected in the country’s overall production of electricity. On Nov. 13, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a report that concludes net generation of electricity in the U.S. was down for the 13th consecutive month compared to the same calendar month in the prior year.

On Monday in his speech at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ annual convention, Exelon Chairman and CEO John W. Rowe said that current legislative proposals on climate will minimize costs to consumers while addressing the looming threat of global warming.

Held in New Orleans from Monday through Wednesday, the Brownfields 2009 Conference is the largest conference in the U.S. focused on environmental revitalization and economic redevelopment of contaminated land, which are known as brownfields. This year’s conference focused several sessions on the topic of placing renewable energy projects such as wind farms and solar energy facilities on brownfields and old mining sites in order to make these sites productive again.

On Nov. 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced projects selected for more than $24 million in grants to research and develop technologies to produce biofuels, bioenergy, and high-value bio-based products. For this program, the DOE plans to invest up to $4.9 million and the USDA intends to contribute up to $19.5 million. Advanced biofuels produced through this funding are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% compared to fossil fuels.

On Friday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) cleared 564 enforcement cases submitted in an omnibus filing by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the Commission-approved reliability organization.

Several clean energy and climate change–related agreements resulted from President Barack Obama’s trip to China. The three main areas addressed by the agreements are coal, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles.

Loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants in the U.S. should not be awarded until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has fully reviewed plans for a proposed project and granted it a combined construction and operating license (COL), Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week.

Six draft policy statements unveiled by the UK’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband on Monday map out an energy future that focuses on a “trinity” of fuels: nuclear, renewables, and “clean” fossil fuels. Miliband also identified 10 suitable sites for the nation’s next generation of nuclear plants and a new policy for the transition to clean coal.

A federally sponsored large-scale project in Mississippi has become the first in the nation to inject more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide in an underground formation, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced last week. Only four other projects—in Norway, Canada, and Algeria—have reached the milestone.

Key developments for U.S. offshore wind this week could give that sector a much-needed boost: On Monday, NRG Energy acquired offshore wind developer Bluewater Wind, and on Tuesday, the governors of Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware formed a tri-state partnership for the deployment of offshore wind energy in the Mid-Atlantic coastal region.

Mississippi’s Public Service Commission (PSC) on Monday unanimously agreed to continue hearings for a $2.4 billion integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal plant in Kempner County, saying that the Mississippi Power Co. (MPCO) had aptly demonstrated that the region would need new generating capacity as early as 2014.

Potential climate change and energy legislation could wreak havoc on industry growth, witnesses said in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday. The hearings follow the 11–1 passage of the Kerry-Boxer bill (The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act) through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)—chair of the Finance Committee, which is currently reviewing the bill—was the sole nay vote.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) last week signed a cooperative agreement with Hydrogen Energy California (HECA) to build and demonstrate a $2.3 billion hydrogen-powered electric generating facility, complete with carbon capture and storage, in Kern County, Calif.

Entergy Corp. reportedly won’t pursue new nuclear builds in the U.S. Southeast because of lower demand seen after Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, the recession, and abundant but unused independent power generation in the region, the company’s CEO J. Wayne Leonard told reporters at this week’s Edison Electric Institute financial conference.

The Department of Energy on Thursday announced up to $338 million in Recovery Act funding for the exploration and development of new geothermal fields and research into advanced geothermal technologies. The grants, which will be matched more than one-for-one with an additional $353 million in private and nonfederal cost-share funds, back 123 projects in 39 states.

Twelve companies and the Desertec Foundation on Friday formally launched a joint venture to manage a project that seeks to generate up to 15% of Europe’s power by 2050 with giant solar and wind farms installed in North African and Middle Eastern deserts. Firms include energy giants E.ON, RWE, and Siemens Energy, and investment companies Deutsche Bank and Munich Re.

Utility industry representatives opposed legislation at a House subcommittee hearing last week that could authorize the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to enforce cyber security standards on all plants connected to the bulk power system.

American Electric Power’s (AEP’s) long-awaited validation of advanced carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technologies at its Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, W.Va., was formally kicked off on Friday. The project is being watched closely around the world because it will be the first to capture carbon dioxide from a pulverized coal-fired power plant as well as inject it into a permanent storage site more than 7,800 feet underground.

Participating utilities pulled the plug on a fully permitted project to build the $1.6 billion Big Stone II coal-fired power plant near Millbank, S.D., on Monday, saying they could not find new backers necessary to build the 500-to-600-MW facility.

The Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) said on Friday it would permit Constellation Energy’s sale of 49.99% of its nuclear business to French group Electricité de France (EDF) for $4.5 billion if Constellation subsidiary Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. agreed to pay $100 rebates to its customers and invested $250 million to control power rate increases.

Speaking yesterday at the opening of Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Arcadia, Fla.—the largest of its kind in the U.S.—President Barack Obama announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history.

A DOE public affairs contact confirmed to POWERnews on Tuesday that the department has canceled a planned second round of funding opportunities for smart grid–related projects. Initially, the DOE had planned to fund projects with American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) money spread over three rounds. Announcement of the third round’s cancellation was made at GridWeek in September, where it was also announced that the second round was being assessed.

The first legislative hearing on the 923-page Kerry-Boxer climate change and energy bill kicked off on Tuesday at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, with four prominent Obama administration officials making the case that failure to act now on climate change could affect U.S. standing in the global economy. Moderate committee members, meanwhile, criticized the legislation, signaling a tough battle ahead.

A settlement reached between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and health and environmental groups on Friday commits the agency to set pollution standards that limit air pollutants such as mercury and soot emissions from the nation’s coal- and oil-fired power plants by November 2011.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that 14 individuals who filed a class-action lawsuit against insurance, coal, and chemical companies can seek relief for property damages resulting from Hurricane Katrina. The court cited a Sept. 21 ruling, Connecticut v. AEP, by a federal court that allowed plaintiffs to sue coal-burning utilities for creating a “public nuisance” through their emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases. It is the second decision to allow a climate change–related public nuisance lawsuit to move past the pleading stage.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Siemens Energy Inc. last week formally commissioned a new 2.3-MW Siemens wind turbine at NREL’s National Wind Technology Center. The turbine is the centerpiece of a multiyear project to study the performance and aerodynamics of a new class of large, land-based machines—in what will be the biggest government-industry research partnership for wind power generation ever undertaken in the U.S., NREL said.