Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Hydropower
Since 1991, annual budget authority for DOE's hydropower R and D program
has not exceeded $6 million (in real terms) for developing cost-effective
technologies to improve the operation of hydropower facilities and address
environmental concerns. Hydropower is currently the largest source of renewable
energy, generating as much as 10 percent of U.S. electricity. The most common
type of hydropower plant uses a dam on a river to store water in a reservoir. Water
released from the reservoir flows through a turbine, spinning it, which, in turn,
activates a generator to produce electricity. Current hydropower technologies can
have undesirable environmental effects, such as fish injury and mortality from
passage through hydropower systems, and negative impacts on the quality of
water downstream. DOE has been working with industry to improve the
environmental and operational performance of hydropower systems. DOE's goal
is to demonstrate advanced turbine technologies that will enable a 10 percent
growth in generation at existing hydropower plants and enhance environmental
performance by 2010. However, the administration's fiscal year 2007 budget
proposed eliminating funding for the hydropower R and D program.
DOE's Fossil R and D Program Has Focused on Reducing
Harmful Emissions and Improving the Efficiency of Burning Coal
DOE's fossil energy R and D has focused primarily on reducing emissions
and increasing the efficiency of coal-fired power plants. DOE also has supported
oil and natural gas R and D through cost-shared partnerships with industry, with
most funding focused on advanced drilling and piping technologies for
exploration and production.
Coal
In the 1980s and early 1990s, DOE's clean coal technology programs used
cost-shared cooperative agreements with power companies to demonstrate
technologies for reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-
fired power plants. In part as a result of concerns about acid rain and
transboundary pollution, the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments required that the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulate hazardous air pollutants,
including sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions.[13] Technologies
demonstrated by the clean coal technology program contributed to a 98-percent
reduction in sulfur dioxide and similar targets for nitrogen oxide emissions from
coal-fired power plants from 1986 to 2005.
