AVS 49th International Symposium
    Advancing Toward Sustainability Topical Conference Tuesday Sessions
       Session AT-TuM

Invited Paper AT-TuM5
Future Environmental Issues Associated with the Generation of Electricity

Tuesday, November 5, 2002, 9:40 am, Room C-210

Session: Aerosols and Climate Change, Growing Energy Demands, and Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing
Presenter: J. Stringer, EPRI
Correspondent: Click to Email
Over the next twenty to forty years the world-wide demand for electricity will increase substantially. In part, this is because of the increasing energy demand, particularly in the developing countries, and the increasing fraction of this energy that will be provided as electricity. In part, it is because of the increase in the global population, with most of this increase taking place also in the developing countries. Certainly for the immediate future, this demand will be met largely by the burning of fossil fuels. This will result in significant environmental challenges, and the major challenge is probably the emission of CO@sub 2@. It is not the object of this paper to discuss the issue of global warming: it is enough that there will almost certainly be a continuing global political pressure to limit these emissions. The current situation will be reviewed, with special emphasis to the United States, and the probable global developments will be discussed. The current options will be described, including methods that are being proposed for the capture and sequestration of the emitted CO@sub 2@. The major issues relate to the separation of the CO@sub 2@ from the relatively dilute concentration of the gas in the very large volume of the combustion off-gas, and the transport of the concentrated gas to a repository. The security and permanence of the various proposed repositories clearly must also be clearly defined and monitored. Alternative paths, including the decarbonization of the generation of electricity, will also be discussed. This decarbonization has been in progress for many years, and clearly the end-point in terms of combustion-based generation is represented by the use of hydrogen as the fuel. Production of hydrogen, either by separation of hydrogen from a hydrocarbon such as methane, or by reforming, presents significant issues, and the transportation and storage of the hydrogen are also issues which have still to be solved. Non-combustion based methods - nuclear fission, hydroelectric generation, biomass combustion, wind-power, and photovoltaic generation - will be briefly reviewed in terms of their possible contributions within the time scale defined above. Other aspects of the overall problem include improved efficiencies in the generation of electricity, reduced losses in transmission, and continued improvements in the efficiency of end use. Most importantly, all of this must be achieved with a minimum economic impact