Coal shipments decline on railways, replaced by oil

Posted on 02/07/2013 by ClimateWire

(Photo by Gravitywave via Creative Commons)

By Daniel Cusick

Shipments of coal on U.S. railroads dropped 11 percent in 2012, according to new figures from the Energy Department, reflecting utilities’ continued shift away from coal-fired power generation in favor of natural gas and renewable fuels for electricity.

But although coal captured a smaller share of rail deliveries in 2012, oil helped make up the difference. Last year, crude oil and petroleum products delivered by rail rose 46 percent over 2011, or by roughly 171,000 carloads, according to data from the Association of American Railroads. →

Beyond the reach of natural gas boom, Minnesota towns look to biomass

Posted on 01/15/2013 by Dan Haugen

The hills above Grand Marais, Minnesota, with Lake Superior in the background. (Photo by Andy Tinkham via Creative Commons)

Cheap natural gas prices have pushed many biomass projects to the back burner in recent years, but it’s a different story in rural communities without access to pipelines.

In northern Minnesota, two towns are considering their next steps after preliminary studies showed that small, wood-burning district heating systems could have economic and environmental benefits — if they can find a way to finance the up-front construction costs.

Grand Marais, on the north shore of Lake Superior, and Ely, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, currently rely on fuel oil or propane for heat.

“Up here, there’s no natural gas because there’s no pipeline. We live on solid rock, so everything is trucked into the community,” says Paul Nelson, chairman of the Cook County Biomass Working Group in Grand Marais.

Meanwhile, both towns are surrounded by aging forests that could provide more than enough sustainably harvested wood to power a community-scale district heating plant, according to an analysis by Dovetail Partners, a Minneapolis environmental nonprofit. →

Renewable energy mix in Chicago aggregation plan remains unclear

Posted on 12/13/2012 by Kari Lydersen

(Photo by Josh Koonce via Creative Commons)

CHICAGO — Chicago’s City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday approving municipal aggregation and a contract with Integrys Energy Services to provide the city’s electricity.

Where that electricity will ultimately be sourced from, however, remains unclear.

Aldermen voted 50-0 and heaped praise on the aggregation plan, which the city projects will save households on average $150 by the end of the contract in May 2015.

“We sent a clear message to the country,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel after the vote. “Not only does the vote send a clear message, it made sure families who live paycheck to paycheck will get what suburban residents have been getting for a while – savings on their utility bills .”

The contract with Integrys will ban electricity from coal-fired generation, which currently provides about 40 percent of the city’s mix. The city has also announced a commitment to renewable energy and energy efficiency investments, though any specific requirements remain to be seen in the contract, which is expected to be finalized within the next few days. →

In Ohio, Utica Shale rig counts may be skewed to favor oil

Posted on 11/27/2012 by EnergyWire

The most recent map of drilling rigs in Ohio’s Utica Shale play. Triangles designate “oil” rigs at work; circles are “gas” rigs. Map courtesy of the Energy Information Administration, from Baker Hughes rig count data.

By Peter Behr

Have prospectors struck oil in Ohio? Again?

That’s certainly what one might think after reading the latest Energy Information Administration report on drilling in the state.

Drawing on the widely read reports on drilling rig activity published by Baker Hughes Inc., EIA said in a “Today in Energy” mini-report last week that there were twice as many active rigs in Ohio’s Utica oil and gas play at the end of October than a year ago. And the big difference was oil exploration.

“The growth in active oil-directed rigs has more than offset the declines in active gas-directed rigs. According to Baker Hughes, about 86 percent, or 24 out of 28 active rigs in the Utica play, were directed toward drilling for shale oil,” EIA said. A year ago, 15 percent were looking for shale oil in the state.

That is a head-scratcher for Ohio’s reborn energy sector. The mother lode in eastern Ohio is believed to be natural gas of the “wet” kind, in which methane pipeline gas is spiked with valuable natural gas liquids — ethane, propane and butane. →

Commentary: The real meaning of Kewaunee’s demise

Posted on 11/15/2012 by guest contributor

By Michael Vickerman

Shock waves reverberated across the Upper Midwest when Dominion Resources announced in late October that it would permanently shut down its Kewaunee nuclear generating station in early 2013. Operational since 1974, the Kewaunee station, located along Lake Michigan 30 miles east of Green Bay, currently generates about 5 percent of the electricity that originates in Wisconsin.

Virginia-based Dominion, which bought the 560-megawatt Kewaunee plant in 2005 from two Wisconsin utilities, attributed its decision to its inability to secure long-term power purchase agreements to keep the plant going. Without securing purchasing commitments from utilities, Dominion would have to sell Kewaunee’s output into the regional wholesale market at prices well below the plant’s cost of production.

While the pricing environment for all bulk power generators is nothing short of brutal these days, Kewaunee carries the additional burden of being an independently owned power plant, since the entities most likely to buy electricity from that generator—utilities–have power plants of their own that compete for the same set of customers. And a growing number of these utility-owned generators burn natural gas, which is currently the least expensive generation source in most areas of the country. →

GE roadshow highlights ‘world’s most efficient’ natural gas plant

Posted on 10/30/2012 by Kari Lydersen

(Photo courtesy General Electric)

CHICAGO — As coal-fired power plants are closing around the country, more natural gas plants are expected to be built to fill the gap, in some cases on the sites of old coal plants.

GE is hoping the trend sparks demand for their new combined cycle natural gas power plants, which they say are the world leader in fuel efficiency and can ramp up more quickly and idle at a lower generation rate than other systems, meaning they are well-suited to backing up increasing amounts of renewable energy on the grid.

GE sold six of their new “FlexEfficiency 60” combined cycle plants to Japan, and they are hoping to drum up orders in the U.S., through a 25-stop cross-country road trip in an 18-wheel tractor trailer outfitted with models and electronic displays about the plants.

Like other combined cycle plants, GE’s new models generate electricity through turbines powered by burning natural gas, then the waste heat is collected and used to create steam which turns another turbine to generate more electricity. The standard model is known as a “2 on 1,” meaning it has two gas turbines and one steam turbine capable of generating up to 750 MW, but it can also be constructed as a “1 on 1” or “3 on 1.” →

Low electricity prices lead Dominion to decommission Wisconsin reactor

Posted on 10/23/2012 by Greenwire

Kewaunee Power Station (Photo via Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

By Gabriel Nelson and Hannah Northey

Richmond, Virginia-based Dominion Resources Inc. said Monday it will shut down and decommission the Kewaunee Power Station near Green Bay, which would make it the first U.S. nuclear reactor to be permanently retired since 1998.

The company said the decision was purely based on economics, which may signal trouble for other nuclear power plants at a time when cheap natural gas and the slowly recovering economy are holding down electricity prices in many parts of the country. →

Data-heavy project aims to move methane emissions research beyond ‘he said, she said’

Posted on 10/16/2012 by EnergyWire

A natural gas well near Hamilton, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Andy Arthur via Creative Commons)

By Gayathri Vaidyanathan and Saqib Rahim

A team of academics, natural gas companies and environmentalists is hoping to pull a crucial environmental issue from the jaws of polarization and controversy — and start moving it into the realm of accepted reality.

Information wars have flared up around the question of how much methane leaks during hydraulic fracturing. Industry has protested against estimates by federal agencies, leading to a swirl of reports from industry and academia that tell contradictory stories about the problem.

According to the reports, methane either leaks in such high volumes that it demolishes the environmental value of natural gas or is generally controlled by industry and poses no large threat. →

From gas to oil: Michigan governor joins protest to block pipeline switch

Posted on 10/09/2012 by Jeff Kart

The route of the Trunkline Pipeline. (Map via Energy Transfer Partners)

Michigan’s governor is speaking out against a plan by operators of a major natural gas pipeline to use it to move bottlenecked crude oil to the Gulf.

Gov. Rick Snyder and others have filed a motion with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to “intervene and protest” the move by Trunkline Gas Co., arguing that abandoning a natural gas pipeline that supplies nearly a third of Michigan’s natural gas would not serve citizens’ energy needs as furnaces are firing up for the winter.

The plan by Energy Transfer Partners would reverse its 770-mile Trunkline system to carry crude oil south, an effort to beat companies like Enbridge and TransCanada to move landlocked Canadian and Bakken oil to the Gulf of Mexico, according to Petroleum News.

“They are projecting that the switch to a Gulf-bound crude pipeline could expand Trunkline’s capacity to 400,000 barrels per day from 150,000 bpd.” →

Authors of model fracking regulation find it’s lonely in the middle

Posted on 10/04/2012 by EnergyWire

$fracking rig$

A drilling rig in Butler County, Pennsylvania. (Photo by WCN 24/7 via Creative Commons)

By Peter Behr

Second in a three-part series. See part one here.

For more than two years, the Environmental Defense Fund has been seeking to line up state regulators and energy companies behind a model regulatory framework for shale gas and oil development that protects underground drinking water supplies and public health.

The project is still a draft. EDF senior policy adviser Scott Anderson says the organization hopes to release the model rules for well construction and fracking by the end of the year.

But EDF’s search for regulatory consensus has pulled it into scarred political terrain, where some environmental groups oppose hydraulic fracturing outright and many industry and state officials challenge any moves to standardize regulation and oversight of a game-changing energy frontier. →

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