A federal appeals court last week upheld the Illinois plan to subsidize two of Exelon’s nuclear plants in order for them to bid competitively into the PJM Interconnection. The unanimous three-judge opinion gave a thumbs up to the state’s “zero emissions credits” program and rejected a challenge by the Electric Power Supply Association, the Washington … More Appeals court upholds Illinois ZEC program balancing state/federal powers

The fate of the long-troubled Vogtle nuclear plant construction project in Georgia, the only new nuclear units being built in the U.S., could now rest with the courts. Jacksonville’s municipal utility JEA has sued in Florida court to overturn what the city believes is a ruinous 20-year take-or-pay power purchase agreement with the Municipal Energy … More Vogtle nukes face a legal challenge

International oil firm Chevron has now been thoroughly vindicated in a decades-long battle over oil pollution in the Ecuadoran rainforest, which resulted in a 2011 $9.5 billion judgment against the California-based company. A federal appeals court in August and an international arbitration court Sept. 7 ruled for Chevron in the case. Both the U.S. Court … More Chevron wins big in $9.5B Ecuador oil pollution dispute

The stars would seem to be aligned to resolve the more than 50-year-old puzzle over what to do with spent fuel from the U.S. civilian nuclear power plant fleet, now stored at reactor sites. And it would seem that the nuclear and electric utility industry approach – reactivating the long-stalled underground storage project at Nevada’s … More U.S. nuclear waste storage: SNAFU

California legislators at the end of August killed a bill to establish a multi-state wholesale electric market in the West, as it neared passage. California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown had been the key advocate of transforming the California Independent System Operator and its region-wide imbalance market into a true regional transmission organization similar to those … More California solons reject west-wide electric grid

FirstEnergy Solutions (FES), the bankrupt competitive generation division of Ohio-based FirstEnergy, informed the PJM Interconnection this week that it plans to close all of its remaining coal-fired generation in Ohio and Pennsylvania, some 4GW in total, by June 2022. The company had already announced it would close its 4 GW of nuclear capacity and would … More FirstEnergy pulling the plug on coal

Is Tesla sacrificing quality for quantity as it produces its allegedly low-cost Model 3 all-electric car? That’s what the Business Insider web site suggests this week, based on internal Tesla documents it has acquired. According to the article, Tesla has reached at the end of June its 2017 goal of 5,000 Model 3 cars rolling … More Tesla pushing quantity over quality?

The long-troubled Vogtle nuclear construction project in Georgia is again in peril, caused by a continuing, uncontrolled increase in costs. While Southern Co., the lead utility in the project, says it is ready to absorb the latest increase in the cost estimate, two major public power systems may pull out. The latest cost increase, $2.3 … More Vogtle project in peril again as costs rise

With the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in a 2-2 partisan deadlock, the internal (and decorous) war between the Democrats and Republicans on the long-festering issue of incorporating greenhouse gas emissions into natural gas pipeline decision appears to be deepening. Commissioner Robert Powelson participated in a number of pipeline cases as he departed the commission on … More Dissent Deepens at FERC over Pipeline Policy

The convoluted tale of South Carolina’s failed nuclear construction project, a year after SCANA Corp. and its South Carolina Electric & Gas subsidiary pulled the plug on the two-unit nuclear project, rolls on. Is an end to this story in sight? Not really. Most recently, on August 6, a federal circuit court rejected SGE&G’s challenge … More South Carolina’s failed V.C. Summer tale continues