The Iowa Supreme Court in the USA has upheld a regulatory decision that allowed the state’s largest utility to undertake a huge expansion of wind energy utilisation, rejecting a challenge from a rival company that claimed that the expansion was unnecessary and unfair to other energy producers.
Higher water temperatures and lower river flows due to climate change pose significant operational and cooling problems for nuclear and coal-fired power plants in both the US and Europe, a study published in Nature Climate Change warns.
US power producers increased their natural gas use by 40 per cent year on year to March 2012, as low prices spur a switch from coal, whose share fell 20 per cent, an EIA report has said.
German solar power plants produced an unprecedented 22 GW of electricity through the midday hours of Friday 25th and Saturday 26th of May, equivalent to 20 nuclear power stations running at full capacity, Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry in Muenster has said.
Analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) estimates that the world’s first carbon capture and storage (CCS) unit will start operation in the US in 2013.
The New Zealand Government has announced that it will invest $4.6 billion over the next 10 years in upgrading the national electricity grid.
Western Japan is to experience above average temperatures from June to August, again renewing the potential for power shortages as demand rises while nuclear power plants stay idle.
Siemens has signed an agreement with Qatar University and Kahramaa, the local Qatari utility for electricity and water, to carry out joint efforts on research and development of energy-efficient systems and solutions to support the rapid development of Qatar’s infrastructure.
New coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology are unlikely to be built in the US without federal subsidies –even with the new environmental regulations that support the technology, a Bloomberg Government report says.
Europe's economic slump has depressed overall emissions and the price of carbon in the EU ETS, allowing utilities to turn back to cheap, highly polluting coal-fired generation while still meeting their emissions targets, recent figures show.