Emissions Compliance in the Fossil-Fuel Based Energy Sector

Most of today's air pollution legislation varies from country to country depending on factors such as the economy, fuel supply, fuel dependency and specific local pollution problems. At the same time, in a growing number of countries, the energy sector is going through a privatisation, deregulation and globalisation process which is affecting energy demand and fuel selection, driving gradual integration of energy markets and requiring new solutions. It is now also well recognized that pollution is often not a localized problem and that gaseous air pollutants can cross great distances. This has led to the cooperation between countries to control transboundary pollution, under bilateral or multilateral agreements. As for the energy sector, countries are not only becoming increasingly linked in political, economic and social terms but also in environmental terms. Power generators and equipment manufacturers have been developing technologies and business agreements in countries with respective legislation constraints over many years and take this trend of interdependence into account. The equipment manufacturers and global solution providers such as Alstom have become the focal point driving the development of new environmental compliance products and solutions within the fossil fuel based energy sector to meet these increasingly stringent emissions reduction requirements while extending the plant lifetime of existing power plants, and keeping them competitive. This paper gives an overview and outlook of environmental regulations, air pollution control technologies and some experience in pioneering environmental long-term service agreements. The most immediately effective way to ensure emissions compliance of existing power plant is obviously to professionally maintain and upgrade the plant in order to guarantee high availability and operating reliability. The second option is to take advantage of monitoring and control systems for continuous process supervision and optimisation. Regular monitoring and fine-tuning of the plant by an expert team using state of the art technology indeed guarantees the lowest possible emissions and energy consumption. A long-term service partnership can secure, for the power generator, plant availability and full environmental compliance.