POWERnews

The first loan guarantees issued by the Department of Energy (DOE) could reportedly be announced within the next two weeks, with awards likely going to solar and energy efficiency technologies.

Building new transmission lines indicates support for the development of a national grid, but doing so would ultimately stifle entrepreneurship and innovation, a campaign focused on the creation of a “perfect” consumer-focused electric energy system has warned.

The UK government has reportedly delayed its decision on an application by German power generation giant E.ON to build a 1,600-MW clean coal power station at Kingsnorth, in Kent, until after the summer.

China’s State Grid Corp., the national transmission and distribution body that commercially deployed a 1,000-kV ultra-high-voltage (UHV) AC demonstration project 640 kilometers long in January, has reportedly said it will now build 17,600 km of UHV lines by 2012.

The Kansas House on Friday passed by a 79-44 vote a bill that could resurrect two coal-burning power plants proposed for western Kansas, but it was five votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to overturn a veto by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

A year after a U.S. appeals court vacated a Clean Air Act Rule that would have allowed a cap-and-trade approach for mercury emitted by power plants, the nation’s highest court on Monday declined to hear arguments on the case.

A federal court on Tuesday sided with 13 states that had challenged the U.S. Environment Protection Agency’s (EPA) annual air quality standard for microscopic pollutants known as particulate matter or soot, ruling that the government’s standards were “unsupported” by “reasoned decision-making.”

A federal appeals court last week slapped the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on the hand for overreaching the authority granted to the agency by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 when it took an “expansive interpretation” of the law in asserting its power to override state decisions.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week announced a sweeping reorganization of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) dispersal of direct loans, loan guarantees, and funding contained in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

If the Obama administration regulates carbon dioxide, future costs to contain or abate emissions at the 600-MW John W. Turk Jr. Power Plant proposed for southwest Arkansas by the Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) could exceed $163 million a year—or more than $2.8 billion for the 40-year life of the plant—says an economic study prepared for two environmental groups.