biomass

Fortum Värme, a company jointly owned by Finnish energy firm Fortum and the city of Stockholm on May 9 inaugurated a new biomass-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant on the shores of Värtan, a strait in Sweden’s capital city. The Värtan CHP8 (130 MWe, 280 MWth), which began construction in 2013, will begin commercial […]

You can’t spell C-S-P without S-P-A-I-N. Though there are now many nations with concentrating solar power (CSP) plants in operation, and nations with larger ones than Spain possesses, it’s difficult to

Australia Slashes Its Renewable Target to 33 TWh. The parliament of coal-rich Australia on June 23 approved legislation to slash the country’s Renewable Energy Target from 41 TWh to 33 TWh. The contentious bill passed after a compromise agreement in May (see “Australian Lawmakers Strike RET Deal” in POWER’s July 2015 issue). Australia’s RET, which […]

Despite plunging oil prices, 2014 was a formidable year for renewables, according to two reports released in early 2015. According to the “Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2015”—the annual report prepared by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance—energy investments […]

Biomass combustion should not be an approved compliance method under the Clean Power Plant because burning trees is not carbon neutral, both senators from Massachusetts told the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday. In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) said that treating bioenergy as having […]

Everyone loves efficiencies. Combining generation technologies can create a plant that’s more than the sum of its parts, but engineering challenges mean these projects are not for the faint of heart. When you think of “hybrids” these days, your first thought is probably of automobiles. But hybrids—hybrid power plants, that is—are starting to emerge in […]

A pilot plant in Andalucía, Spain, built by a consortium of multinational European partners, is converting toxic waste from olive oil production into electricity using an innovative three-part process

With quickly approaching deadlines for achieving renewable portfolio standard goals, the likely lapse of a critical exemption this month may increase the challenges for meeting those mandates. Approximately four years ago the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took the first step in regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from electric generating units (EGUs) by promulgating the […]

Last year, the U.S. exported nearly twice the amount of wood pellets it sent overseas in 2012—and almost all of it went to Europe for heat and power needs. This trend has gained momentum since 2009, when the European Commission (EC) enacted its 2020 climate and energy package, and will possibly continue in the long […]