India

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 […]

Numerous announcements of plant closures during the past week are painting a grim picture for the future of the coal industry. On March 20, several news outlets reported that American Electric Power (AEP) had sent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, notices to workers at half a dozen coal-fired plants. Employees at the […]

The U.S. on Tuesday issued a new final determination affirming that some crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) products from China and Taiwan have been sold at dumping margins of between 11% and 165%. The final determination from the Department of Commerce stems from anti-dumping duty and countervailing duty investigations covering a category of cells, modules, laminates, […]

Recent months have seen a violent shakeup of India’s coal supply sector and may result in the end of a 40-year-old government monopoly on mining and selling coal. The development could be a boon for

Events over the past year—turmoil in the oil-rich Middle East and the Russian-Ukraine gas crisis—along with uncertainty for nuclear power and pervading energy poverty worldwide show that the energy system is “under stress,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its freshly released World Energy Outlook 2014 (WEO-2014). Despite technology and efficiency improvements, without actions […]

Think your nuclear plant faced delays and obstacles? India’s Kudankulam project, Unit 1 of which begins commercial operation this month, spent 26 years in development and construction and faced down obstacles that included a seven-month blockade by protesters to become the nation’s largest nuclear plant.  There are power plant projects that seem to drag on […]

Finland Rejects Permit Extension for Olkiluoto Reactor. Finland’s government on Sept. 25 rejected an application from utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) to extend a permit for its proposed Olkiluoto 4 reactor for five years. TVO requested the extension in light of delays from its Olkiluoto 3 EPR project, which is being built by an AREVA-Siemens […]

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) in September issued a proposal to vastly increase the county’s reliance on solar photovoltaic (PV) generation, taking installed capacity from its current 2.6 GW to more than 20 GW over the next five years. Following on the nation’s ambitious-but-troubled ultra-mega coal plant build-out—only one has come online, […]

In the October 2013 issue of POWER, Tata Power’s 4-GW Mundra ultra-mega power plant was recognized with a Top Plant award in the coal category. This year POWER recognizes another behemoth in the region—and

This is a tough time to be running a business as power-intensive as aluminum smelting in India. The economic boom that has lifted many of the nation’s 1.2 billion citizens out of persistent poverty has