POWERnews

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.

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.

Southern Co. plans to implement an advanced integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) technology developed in conjunction with the Energy Department, KBR Inc., and other partners at an Alabama federal research facility at an existing fuel oil–fired power plant in China, the company said on Thursday.

The Department of Energy last week announced the award of 11 projects worth $75.5 million to conduct site characterization of promising geologic formations for carbon dioxide storage.

Babcock International last week agreed to buy the full commercial arm of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA)—a UK government body that provides nuclear decommissioning, waste management, and new nuclear build support services—for £50 million.

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.