POWERnews

A report presented to China’s legislature on Monday by Premier Wen Jiabao could have positive implications for the country’s centrally owned grid and nuclear firms, but they could leave "thermal generators out in the cold," experts said.

In the keynote address to the CERAWeek 2012 conference in Houston on Tuesday, Helge Lund, president and CEO of Norway-based Statoil, urged the oil and gas industry to embrace a greater sense of responsibility in facing its current and future challenges.

Three Memorandums of Agreement (MOA) between the U.S. government entities and private companies signed on Friday will seek to leverage Savannah River’s land assets and energy facilities near Aiken, S.C., to support potential private sector development, testing, and licensing of prototype small modular reactor (SMR) technologies.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday announced a planned six-year $180 million initiative—including an initial commitment of $20 million this year—to accelerate the deployment of four offshore wind power projects in the U.S. The funds are subject to congressional appropriations.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) on Thursday introduced the Clean Energy Standard Act (CES) of 2012, a bill that could require some utilities around the nation to ensure at least 24% of all power sold in 2015 could be defined as “clean energy.” Under the bill, by 2020, that percentage would grow to 39%, by 2025, 54%, and by 2035, 84%.

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that Albuquerque, N.M.–based PNM could not delay enforcement of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandate that would force it to install pollution controls at its 1,800-MW coal-fired San Juan Generating Station near Farmington, N.M., while the issue is considered by the court.

Houston-based GenOn is the latest of a string of power firms to announce planned power plant closures in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey. The company formed in December 2010 through the merger of Mirant Corp. and RRI today announced it would deactivate 3,140 MW of generating capacity in PJM’s operational region between June 2012 and May 2015, citing insufficient “forecasted returns on investments necessary to comply with environmental regulations.”

In a landmark ruling that some analysts are calling a “major victory” for the hydropower sector, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court last week overturned a March 2010 decision by the Montana Supreme Court that entitled the state of Montana to collect $89 million in back rent from PPL Montana for that company’s use of state-owned riverbeds for long-standing hydropower plants.

An updated roadmap for the smart grid is now available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which recently finished reviewing and incorporating roughly 240 comments on the draft version that was released for public comment in October last year.

A severe blaze that broke out on Monday morning at RWE npower’s 750-MW Tilbury power station—a plant recently converted from coal to biomass that has been billed as a pioneer in its use of that technology—raged for two days, until Tuesday, when it was brought under control. All employees at the plant have been accounted for.