US government approval for the Freeport LNG Terminal on Quintana Island, Texas to export LNG to countries with which the US does not have a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) have brought Japan a step closer to realising cheaper supplies of natural gas for power generation. Osaka Gas and Chubu Electric have already signed liquefaction tolling agreements with Freeport LNG, back in July 2012, to each acquire a 2.2mtpa production capacity of the first train at Freeport, potentially as early as in 2017.

Toshiba Infrastructure South America Ltd (TIC-SA), the Brazilian arm of electronics multinational Toshiba has started producing electricity transformers in a newly launched $58 million (¥6.0 billion) manufacturing plant in the city Betim, which is part of the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has legally completed the acquisition of Pratt & Whitney Power Systems (P&W PS), a manufacturer of small and medium-size gas aero engines. Following the takeover, the Japanese engineering conglomerate launched operations of its new aero-engine segment under the name of PW Power Systems.

EDF is planning to add 975MW of gas-fired power generation to its installed capacity in France, a spokesman for the company told Gas to Power Journal. The additions will come from the planned commissioning of a second 465MW combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant in Martigues in 2013 and the joint development with GE of a 510MW "new generation" CCGT plant on EDF's Bouchain site in Northern France, scheduled for late 2015.

A leading driver behind Mexico's rising natural gas consumption in recent years has been the substantial rise in the use of gas in the power sector, country analysis undertaken by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) finds.

Industry in southern Germany could curb their electricity consumption at times of peak demand by up to 480MW in the course of an hour if Demand-Side Management (DSM) mechanisms were to be widely implanted, according to study presented by energy think thank Agora in Berlin this week.

Commercial operations have begun three months ahead of schedule at the $900 million gas-fired 800MW Sentinel Energy Project near Desert Hot Springs, Riverside County, California. The plant is co-owned by Competitive Power Ventures (CPV), GE Energy Financial Services and Diamond Generating Corporation (DGC). The general contractor for the construction of the project was Gemma Power Systems California.

The EU's Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has called on the European Council and Parliament to approve the proposed back-loading of 900 billion carbon emission allowances (EUAs) in emissions trading scheme (EU ETS). Back-loading would reduce the surplus of emissions in the ETS, and the subsequent rise in carbon prices would encourage power producers to favour gas over coal.

Fortum's €130million ($167million) waste-fired CHP plant has started this week in the city of Klaipeda, Lithuania. It is the first of its kind in the Baltics, one of four such plants planned for the Baltic and Nordic region.

The contribution of gas to the UK's power generation mix has plunged by 32 percent in 2012 from 2011 level, comprising 28 percent of total generation, mainly due to the relative low cost of coal compared to gas and cheap coal imports mainly from Russia, Columbia and the United States, the latest country analysis done by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows. The contribution of coal was 39 percent of UK's energy mix, rising by 32 percent.