POWERnews

GE Energy and the University of Wyoming (UW) reached agreement last week on a proposed development plan for the High Plains Gasification Advanced Technology Center. This facility, consisting of a small-scale gasification system, would enable researchers from both GE and UW to develop advanced gasification and “cleaner” coal solutions for Powder River Basin and other […]

Italy’s largest power company, Enel, and its biggest oil and gas company, Eni, will partner to create the country’s first project to capture carbon dioxide from a coal-fired plant and store it underground. The companies’ chief executives signed a strategic agreement last week at Italy’s Ministry of Environment headquarters to join forces and develop an […]

Australia’s University of New South Wales (UNSW) announced last week that a recalibration of the international standard by which solar cells are measured revealed that they had created the first silicon solar cell to achieve the “magic” efficiency milestone of 25%. Physics dictates that the theoretical maximum efficiency for first-generation silicon photovoltaic cells will be […]

The impact of environmental initiatives and the need for transmission infrastructure are among the most important issues facing electric reliability in North America over the coming 10 years, the quasi-public agency North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) said last week in its 2008 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (PDF). Though the total miles of transmission additions have […]

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) last week announced plans to allow geothermal drilling in more than 190 million acres of federal land, spanning 12 Western states. Dirk Kempthorne, secretary of the interior, said that the proposed initiative could increase geothermal power production in the U.S. tenfold. “Geothermal energy will play a key role […]

Dynegy Inc. must disclose timely and relevant information to investors about the financial risks that climate change may pose under an agreement the national energy company signed with New York’s attorney general on Thursday. Dynegy is the second of five companies to agree to make climate change disclosures. Xcel Energy was the first, signing a […]

French nuclear engineering firm AREVA and global defense and technology company Northrop Grumman Corp. plan to jointly build a new facility in Newport News, Va., to engineer and manufacture heavy components for AREVA’s U.S. Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR). The companies expect that the new facility will boost the U.S. nuclear resurgence. The companies said Thursday […]

Exelon has proposed the purchase of all the outstanding shares of NRG’s common stock for $6.2 billion. The combination of Exelon and NRG would form a utility with a generating capacity of about 47,000 MW and create the largest utility in the U.S., dwarfing both American Electric Power with 36,000 MW and Duke Energy with […]

Europe’s first EPR nuclear power plant, the Olkiluoto 3 in Finland, is now three years behind schedule and will not come on-line until 2012, Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) admitted last week. The delay is the fourth announced for the 1,600-MW plant, which has been plagued with faulty materials and planning problems since construction […]

The UK will build only a quarter of the 29 GW of offshore wind farms needed to reach its target to have 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020 unless the government acts urgently to reduce costs and risks to developers, a government-funded but independent think tank said in a report launched last week. […]