POWERnews

What do we know as of February 1 about key Trump appointees responsible for administering White House policies affecting the power generation industry? Not much. As the Trump administration settles in, how his teams at energy and environment agencies will implement his policy agenda remains unclear, as does his agenda. At the end of January, […]

Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee are digging their heels in, refusing to allow a vote on President Donald Trump’s nominee for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. Pruitt’s nomination was due to come to a vote February 1, but when it came time to gavel […]

As one of its first announcements under the Trump administration, the Department of Energy (DOE) will invest up to $30 million in new projects to support the integration of solar into the nation’s electric grid. The agency’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy announced the measure as part of its SunShot Initiative, which the […]

In a step that it hopes will be emulated by developers of new natural gas generation facilities in the U.S., NTE Energy has voluntarily committed to drastically slash greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the proposed 550-MW Killingly Energy Center facility in Connecticut—and to shut it down by 2050 unless it operates with no net GHG […]

Heads of some of the nation’s energy trade groups are looking forward to a rollback of regulations under the Trump administration, they said January 31 during a panel discussion at the United States Energy Association’s annual State of the Energy Industry Forum. President and CEO of the National Mining Association, Hal Quinn, perhaps the most […]

An explosion and fire at the Delta Energy Center—an 835-MW combined cycle power plant located in Pittsburg, Calif.—forced the station offline on January 29. A spokesperson for Calpine Corp., the plant owner, told POWER that the fire was contained to the facility and that there was no danger to the neighboring community. No injuries occurred […]

American Electric Power (AEP) has sold four competitive natural gas and coal power plants‚ a total of 5.2 GW, and plans to invest the proceeds from the sale in its regulated business. AEP completed the sale of the plants to Lightstone Generation LLC, a joint venture of Blackstone and an affiliate of ArcLight Capital Partners […]

The board of French utility EDF has approved a compensation package for the closure of France’s oldest nuclear reactor, the 39-year-old Fessenheim nuclear plant, but it delayed making a final decision on the closure until after the presidential election this spring. Closure of the 1,800-MW Fessenheim plant in northeastern France, near the German border, has […]

Though Southern California weathered last summer without major natural gas supply constraints that were feared as a result of the 2015–2016 leak from the Aliso Canyon storage field, a blast of cold weather this week has forced Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) to withdraw stored gas from the still-damaged facility to maintain reliability. The limited […]

Having been denied a request for an extended schedule, petitioners in an ongoing lawsuit challenging the merits of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for coal-fired power plants late on January 23 filed a series of briefs with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The briefs filed […]