POWERnews

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced on Oct. 30 that a multi-partner team led by Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois has been selected for an award of up to $120 million over five years to establish a new Batteries and Energy Storage Hub.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on Monday made public a proposal that calls for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use its authority under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to set greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards for existing power plants. The NRDC approach would have the EPA create “systemwide standards” rather than ones based on individual generating units.

Allowing unlimited U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) would increase marginal costs of supply and raise domestic natural gas prices, but it would have "net economic benefits" across a range of scenarios ranging from relatively normal conditions to stress cases with high costs of producing natural gas in the U.S. and exceptionally large demand for U.S. LNG exports around the world, a report prepared for the Department of Energy and released on Wednesday suggests.

A day after French utility EDF released a cost update for its Flamanville EPR reactor under construction in Normandy, France, claiming increases of a stunning $2.6 billion—bringing overall estimated costs for the advanced reactor to $10.5 billion—Italian power giant Enel formally withdrew its participation from that project and five other French EPR projects.

NRG Energy has given up a $1.2 billion plan to add a 744-MW pulverized coal unit to its Limestone Electric Generating Station near Jewett, Texas, saying low natural gas prices had rendered the project uneconomic.

Regulatory uncertainty concerning the disposal of coal ash has stalled coal ash recycling in the U.S. and kept levels below those reported in 2008 for a third consecutive year, suggests a new report from the American Coal Ash Association (ACAA).

Compared to projections from last year, an Early Release Overview of the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) Annual Energy Outlook 2013 (AEO2013) released on Wednesday foresees higher gas production and, with it, a higher share of gas generation by 2040. The outlook also projects a growing share of renewable and nuclear power, but dampened future coal use.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) on Friday announced that the nation’s first competitive lease sales on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) for wind energy will be held next year. The lease sales cover 277,550 acres in two wind energy areas (WEAs) over federal waters along the Atlantic Coast that have a high wind resource potential.

A new report from the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) challenges claims by Mississippi Power Co. (MPC) that its 582-MW Kemper Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant under construction in Kemper County, Miss., is 70% complete, and suggests that the project is over budget and behind schedule in several respects.

A post-combustion polymeric membrane system that promises to separate and capture 90% of the carbon dioxide emitted from a pulverized coal plant has been successfully demonstrated and last week received approval from  the Department of Energy (DOE) to advance to a larger-scale field test.