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The impact of the energy industry on the environment is a crucial
aspect of existing energy technology and an important driver for the
development of new “Clean” energy technology with a smaller impact.
Since the 1970’s the list of pollutants with air and water emission
limits have grown while those limits have been steadily reduced. The
increasing quality of life for the population and the beneficial impact
on habitats for plants and animals ensures that this trend will
continue. Water and Wastewater Treatment
Water quality was one of the first issues that drove legislators to
craft comprehensive national legislation to improve the quality of
water resources. This effort continues to enjoy broad growth as the
protection of natural water resources is increasingly linked with both
safe drinking water and the treatment of wastewater.
The technology for water treatment and purification has continued to
evolve, with far more efficient methods emerging in the large-scale
market, and exciting new modular technologies appearing at the small
end of the market. Together, these growing capabilities promise to
continue improving flexibility of planners to improve the quality of
water at a low cost.
Air Quality and Emission Mitigation
Air quality is by several orders of magnitude the most significant
environmental issue confronting refineries and power generation
facilities, so control and reduction of pollution has long been a
central challenge for the energy industry. Since power facilities are
the most visible component, that segment receives most of the scrutiny.
Air quality can be improved in power facilities either through adding
additional control equipment to the output stream, or improving the
design of the generation facility itself to improve the efficiency of
operation. Both methods can have a strong positive impact, with many
new power plant designs being developed to clean the effluent during
the operation of the power facility, thus reducing the need for
additional scrubbers, which reduce the efficiency of the power facility.
CO2 Sequestration
With the concerns about Global Warming increasing, the reduction of CO2
emissions from power generation facilities that burn fossil fuels have
gained a prominent position in the power industry. A growing consensus
of people in the industry believes that the reduction of CO2 will come
to impact the power industry in a major way in the coming years. This
has brought forth many technological options to capture the CO2
emerging from a power facility and pipe it into long-term, underground
facilities (sequestration).Technology to capture CO2 has existed for
many years—what are being developed now are efficient processes that
can reliably do it on a large scale in real world conditions cheaply.
With the continued use of fossil fuels (especially coal) understood,
the sequestration of CO2 will both reduce the global impact of existing
fossil fuel technologies and increase the cost of these so that
renewable energy technologies will receive a comparative benefit for
choosing new sources of energy.
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