POWERnews

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds keep flowing from Washington. On Tuesday, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that a project with NRG Energy has been selected to receive up to $154 million, including funding from ARRA. Located in Thompsons, Texas, the post-combustion capture and sequestration project will demonstrate advanced technology to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. It will also assist with enhanced oil recovery efforts from a nearby oil field.

American Electric Power has been named one of the top 50 companies for executive women by the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) for a second time.

Entergy Corp. accepted a national award on Mar. 3 for its work restoring power following a destructive ice storm last year in Arkansas. It is the 12th consecutive year Entergy has received a storm response award from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI).

Concentrix Solar, a German supplier of concentrator photovoltaic systems, announced on Feb. 24 that it has signed a contract with Chevron Technology Ventures for the deployment of a 1-MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant to be installed at a Chevron Mining facility in Questa, New Mexico.

On Tuesday, Sweden’s enterprise minister, Maud Olofsson, announced in an editorial in Dagens Nyheter that his country would build 2,000 new wind turbines in 10 years for a total added capacity of 10 TWh by 2020. Sweden currently has the largest percentage (about 20%) of renewable energy in Europe and has a goal of supplying at least 50% of its energy from renewables by 2020.

While nuclear power is taking one step forward and two steps back in the U.S. (see top two stories), several other nations, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, are lining up to build new—or their first—reactors.

Last Wednesday, Vermont’s state Senate voted to disallow the operation of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant after its current license expires March 21, 2012. The plant would change ownership if Entergy were allowed to spin off a new company consisting of its merchant nuclear fleet. The likelihood of that happening now looks very dim.

Both units of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in southern Maryland were offline for 10 days after water leaked through the plant’s roof on Feb. 18, causing a ground fault at Unit 1 that led to a series of events resulting in the automatic shutdown of both units.

The 365-MW Powder River Basin coal–fired Wyodak Power Plant near Gillette, Wyo., shut down last Friday after one of its 140-foot-tall scrubber vessels sustained significant structural damage.

In a statement last Thursday, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) recommended that power plants and industry discontinue the gas venting practice that resulted in the massive explosion on Feb. 7 at the Connecticut Kleen Energy plant, which was not yet online.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson defended the science behind the agency’s so-called “endangerment finding” at a Senate hearing on Tuesday—the day after she told coal-state lawmakers that the agency could begin phasing in permit requirements controlling greenhouse gases emitted by large stationary sources beginning in 2011.

The UK’s nuclear safety and security regulator last week raised a regulatory issue against Westinghouse’s AP1000 nuclear reactor design, saying it was not satisfied that the modular construction methodology could protect the third-generation pressurized water reactor from severe weather or physical impact. The finding comes on the heels of a similar issue raised by the […]

A $1 billion settlement negotiated by CPS Energy and Nuclear Innovation North America (NINA) last week ended a bitter legal dispute between the companies and could allow the proposed nuclear expansion of the South Texas Project (STP) near Bay City, Texas, to proceed.

The Department of Energy on Monday conditionally offered California solar company BrightSource Energy more than $1.37 billion in loan guarantees to support construction and start-up of three utility-scale concentrated solar power plants (CSP) in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California.

A draft bill being circulated by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) seeks to create a federal clean electricity standard that could require utilities to supply 13% of electricity from “clean” sources by 2012, reach 25% in 2025, and 50% in 2050.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday offered to conditionally guarantee $8.33 billion in loans for Southern Co.’s project to build two AP1000 nuclear reactors at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Burke, Ga. The pledge marks the first federal nuclear loan guarantee, and it could boost construction of the first U.S. nuclear plant in more than 30 years. More commitments are on the way, the Energy Department said.

BP America, Caterpillar, and ConocoPhillips have pulled out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), an alliance of business and environmental groups that has been pushing for cap-and-trade legislation.

An executive order issued by Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, directs the state’s Department of Environmental Quality not to adopt rules under the Western Climate Initiative’s (WCI’s) cap-and-trade program without legislative authorization—but it stops short of withdrawing the state from the coalition that plans to implement a regional emissions trading program by January 2012.

The Arkansas Supreme Court is scheduled on April 15 to hear oral arguments in Southwestern Electric Power Co.’s (SWEPCO’s) appeal of a court decision that took away a permit to build the 600-MW John W. Turk Jr. coal-fired power plant in Hempstead County—the nation’s first ultrasupercritical project.

The first of two new supercritical 615-MW coal-fired units at the $2.3 billion Oak Creek power plant have come online, We Power said last week. Construction continues to complete the second 615-MW unit, and it is expected to be commercially operational later this year.

Ohio-based power company FirstEnergy Corp. last week announced it plans to buy Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Energy in a $4.7 billion deal. The stock-for-stock transaction—valued at $8.5 billion—is expected to create one of the largest U.S. utilities.

French nuclear giant AREVA on Monday said it had acquired 100% of Ausra, a major U.S.-based provider of large-scale concentrated solar power (CSP) plants. The acquisition marks AREVA’s foray into solar power. The company already has major offshore wind and biomass ventures.

Investigative efforts continue into the cause and origin of Sunday’s catastrophic explosion that killed five workers and injured 27 others at Kleen Energy System’s natural gas–fired plant being built at a remote location in Middletown, Conn.

Executives from U.S. wind, biomass, geothermal, hydropower, and solar industry groups on Tuesday jointly called on Congress to enact tax incentives, a federal renewable energy standard (RES), and comprehensive legislation—measures they said would accelerate growth in those energy sectors.

The week brought important policy and technology news concerning carbon capture and storage (CCS) from around the world. President Barack Obama unveiled a task force to make “clean coal” a reality as the European Union struck a major deal with member states for CCS funding. Caterpillar joined the FutureGen Alliance, and Siemens Energy said it would conduct a feasibility study for a novel postcombustion CCS system in West Virginia.

Calpine Corp. last week received final approval to build its long-delayed 600-MW Russell City Energy Center in the City of Hayward, Calif. The Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permit issued by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) puts limits on the natural gas–fired power plant’s carbon emissions.

Despite some powerful drivers, nuclear power faces too many barriers compared to other means of generating electricity, and that means that a significant expansion of nuclear power is unlikely to occur before 2030, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), a Canadian think tank, said in a report on Thursday.

Exelon Corp. last week said it intends to join the FutureGen Alliance, a consortium developing a 275-MW integrated gasification combined cycle power plant with carbon capture in Matoon, Ill.

The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) on Monday said it had received pledges from 55 countries to limit and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2020. The international climate change body said the countries together accounted for about 78% of global GHG emissions from energy use.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week voted to approve interpretive guidance that calls for disclosure of climate-related business risks. These include the anticipated impact of climate change on assets and financial risks associated with compliance costs for existing and pending regulations.