POWERnews

A new report from the National Academy of Sciences finds that in 2005, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter emitted by 406 coal-fired power plants—representing some 95% of the nation’s coal-fired generation—caused about $62 billion in “hidden” costs, or damages not reflected in market prices of electricity.

Start-up of Europe’s first EPR nuclear power plant, the Olkiluoto 3 under construction in Finland, has been postponed beyond June 2012 because civil construction is taking longer than was previously estimated, according plant owner Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO). Finland’s nuclear regulatory agency has, meanwhile, called attention to “deficiencies” in the welding of the plant’s cooling system, potentially causing further delays.

The Pioneer Project—a long-awaited large-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) demonstration facility—last week got a boost as French industrial giant Alstom and Canada’s largest investor-owned power group, TransAlta, partnered with the governments of Canada and Alberta to build the plant at a coal-fired generation station in Canada.

Beacon Power Corp.—maker of a much-watched flywheel system that is designed to regulate grids using efficient energy storage—last week garnered the New York State Public Service Commission’s (PSC’s) approval for a proposed 20-MW flywheel frequency regulation plant in Stephentown, N.Y., as well as for the project’s overall financing.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce fell victim to serial hoaxers The Yes Men on Monday, when pranksters sent out a press release on the Chamber’s letterhead announcing that the business group of 3 million members had changed its views on climate change legislation and would be holding a press conference to talk about its new position. The hoax was only exposed midway through the fake press conference after it was interrupted by a real Chamber official.

Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer last week warned that federal rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeking to limit nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions by requiring costly technological retrofits at the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station (NGS) could threaten closure of the plant and impact jobs, power supplies, and water costs to the state’s citizens.

The Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP), one of seven partnerships in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships program, said today that it has successfully injected 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the Mount Simon Sandstone, a deep saline formation that is spread out across much of the Midwest.

In the wake of this week’s Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) in London—a meeting attended by leaders from 22 countries to explore the best ways to accelerate commercialization of carbon capture and storage (CCS)—several significant announcements were made around the world.

The $8 million pilot project funded by 37 power companies from around the world to test Alstom’s advanced chilled ammonia process on a 1.7-MW flue slipstream at We Energies’ coal-fired Pleasant Prairie power plant in Wisconsin has demonstrated more than 90% carbon capture—or about 40 tons each day—sponsors said on Thursday.

American Superconductor Corp. (AMCS) announced on Tuesday that its Superconductor Electricity Pipelines have been chosen for the Tres Amigas Project, the nation’s first renewable energy market hub. The Tres Amigas Project, introduced yesterday in Albuquerque by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who was energy secretary in President Bill Clinton’s administration, focuses on uniting the three main U.S. power grids for the first time to enable faster adoption of renewable energy and increase the reliability of the U.S. grid.

The Mexican government over the weekend disbanded Luz y Fuerza del Centro, a state-owned power utility that distributes 30% the country’s power supply, and ordered the federal electricity commission to seize the utility’s operations because it was hemorrhaging money and the ensuing budget gap could threaten service to some 25 million customers.

Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL) last week said that it will likely open its 90,000-panel photovoltaic (PV) solar facility later this month. The DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Arcadia, Fla., project, which will overtake Nevada’s Nellis Solar Power Plant for the title of largest solar photovoltaic (PV) facility in the nation and in North America, will begin operation as several other large U.S. solar projects are being shelved.

The cap-and-trade approach will best tackle global warming and sustain economic recovery because, though reducing carbon emissions will cost money, alternatives to cap and trade will cost more, Exelon Chair and CEO John W. Rowe reiterated on Tuesday in a keynote address at the PennFuture Southeast Global Warming Conference in Penn Valley, Pa.

The catastrophe at the 6,400-MW Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant that killed 75 workers in southern Siberia on Aug. 17 had a number of contributing causes, including design, operation, and repair drawbacks, an investigative report released last week by the Russian industrial safety regulator Rostekhnadzor said. But the agency also pointed fingers at six high-ranking officials, saying that the accident resulted from their “negligence, laxity, and a lack of engineering thinking.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week proposed a rule that would limit future regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Clean Air Act to industrial facilities that emit 25,000 tons or more of carbon dioxide annually. The announcement was made on the same day as Senate Democrats unveiled the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” indicating increased pressure on Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation.

Canadian Hydro Developers last week agreed to buy the rights to a proposed 4,440-MW offshore wind project—what could possibly be the largest offshore wind facility in the world—in Lake Erie from Utah-based Wasatch Wind, but the company later acknowledged that the Ontario government had not yet granted it the rights to build the farm.

Alcoa Power Generating (APGI) has countered North Carolina’s alleged efforts to seize its privately owned hydropower business along the Yadkin River by filing a formal response with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the company said on Tuesday.

A pilot project begun at NRG Energy’s 1,700-MW Big Cajun II power plant will evaluate local conditions for growing switchgrass and high-biomass sorghum and determine if they could replace a portion of the plant’s combusted coal to reduce its carbon intensity. The project could lead to commercial-scale projects that would substitute biomass for some of the coal burned at NRG’s other carbon-intensive plants, the company said last week.

Twelve U.S. carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects will be the first to receive grants from the $1.4 billion allocated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Energy Department said on Friday.

NRG Energy’s proposed 112-MW project to repower its coal-fired Somerset Station in Massachusetts with plasma gasification technology has moved on to the due diligence phase of the Department of Energy’s federal loan guarantee program.

New geothermal projects representing as much as 7,100 MW of new baseload capacity were under development in 14 U.S. states between March and September 2009. When added to the 3,100 MW of existing capacity, these could bring U.S. geothermal capacity to more than 10 GW, a new report from the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) shows.

Senate Democrats today unveiled the long-awaited 821-page discussion draft of the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” a bill touted as “tough on corporate pollution”—but which will “improve the way the nation generates and uses energy,” without raising the “federal deficit by one single dime.”

Exelon Corp. is the third utility to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the past week, following moves by California utility PG&E Corp. and New Mexico–based PNM Resources. Exelon, the largest nuclear operator in the U.S. cited the “organization’s opposition to climate legislation” for its decision, an allegation the business federation refuted on Tuesday.

Dozens are feared dead after a 330-foot chimney under construction at a 1,200-MW coal-fired power plant collapsed last week in India’s Chhattisgarh state. Teams have so far retrieved 46 bodies from the debris.

A federal appeals board has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will have to reconsider a long-contested air permit for the $3 billion Sithe Global Desert Rock coal-fired power plant on the Navajo Reservation, saying that the agency abused its discretion by not considering integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology in its analysis of best available pollution control systems for the plant.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has joined American Electric Power (AEP) and Alstom in a validation of advanced carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technologies at AEP’s Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, W.Va. The $76 million 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.

In a decision that experts say could have profound implications on the future of climate change litigation, a two-judge panel of a federal appeals court on Monday reversed a 2005 district court decision and ruled that eight states and New York City can sue coal-burning utilities for creating a “public nuisance” through their emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday issued a final rule that will require—for the first time—most large emitters of greenhouse gases to begin recording data under a new reporting system starting in 2010.

The week brought several developments concerning climate change legislation. A Republican senator is considering introducing an amendment to a fiscal appropriations bill that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources. Meanwhile, as reports emerged that Senate hearings on climate change legislation could begin next month, Texas Governor Rick Perry railed against the Waxman-Markey bill, and China pledged to slow growth of its carbon emissions.

Working Mother magazine has selected American Electric Power (AEP) as one of the 100 best companies for working mothers. AEP is the only electric utility and the only Ohio-based company on the 2009 list.