Power equipment suppliers have been urged to prepare for increases in demand for carbon capture storage (CCS) and other technologies predicted to be big in years ahead as energy suppliers work towards meeting regulated targets for carbon output.
Speaking at the International Power Summit in Rome last week, the European Power Plant Suppliers Association president Patrick Clerens said green technology will be where areas of new opportunity exist for equipment suppliers in years ahead.
“There will be a huge market for CCS; also for retrofit [equipment],” Clerens said.
Conversion techniques from fossil fuel to biomass have also become important in research but problems encountered with economies of scale threaten to hold projects back according to a spokesman from Dutch utility Essent.
He said trials in place today are testing the viability of industry refuse to power conversions but these projects are yet to achieve practical results.
“This kind of technology plant costs more and takes longer to build and you would have to bring enormous quantities of waste to one place,” Essent spokesman Albert Loem said, adding that it would be hard to convince communities to live with such large stockpiles of waste.
Community opposition to nuclear, on the other hand, has cooled dramatically to a point where Loem predicts a “renaissance” for the controversial energy form.
“I think there is a bright future for nuclear,” Loem said.
Regardless of power source power stations will be required to become more efficient, according to Austrian Energy and Environment spokesperson Martin Pogoreutz.
Pogoreutz said the world’s power stations convert on average 22% of the fuel they use into energy in comparison to today’s newest, state-of-the-art power plants which can convert at up to 50%.
European global supplier and researcher AE&E said it has worked on numerous projects that have helped plants become completely CO2 free using biomass alone.
“We have already implemented a lot of CO2-free power plants because they are fired by biomass,” Pogoreutz said.
“This is something which could be immediately installed to reduce CO2 emissions.”
Another project AE&E is involved in is looking into oxy-fuel, which involves extracting power from pure oxygen which is said to largely eliminate flu gas because the emissions are able to be stored and compressed immediately after combustion.
By David Binning.
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