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EFFICIENT, LOW-POLLUTION FUEL-CELL POWER PLANT IN MARYLAND ANNOUNCED BY EPA, DOE

Release Date: 10/26/2000
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FOR RELEASE: THURSDAY, OCT. 26, 2000


EFFICIENT, LOW-POLLUTION FUEL-CELL POWER PLANT IN
MARYLAND ANNOUNCED BY EPA, DOE

A new power plant announced yesterday, jointly-funded by EPA and the U.S. Dept. of Energy, is expected to usher in a groundbreaking new way of generating electricity that will operate more like a battery than a boiler. Since there will be no combustion, there will be virtually none of the air pollutants traditionally generated by power plants, such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides; water and waste pollution will also be reduced. EPA and DOE expect this revolutionary fuel cell-gas turbine “hybrid” system to be the most efficient in the world. It is slated to power EPA’s Environmental Science Center at Ft. Meade, Md., one of the federal government’s principal environmental laboratories, beginning in 2002. Combining a fuel cell and microturbine will result in electrical generating efficiency of nearly 60 percent, traditional power plants in the United States convert only 35 percent of a fuel’s energy to useful electricity. This high efficiency means that the fuel cell system will use less fuel than traditional plants per amount of energy generated, thereby spawning much less carbon dioxide (the major global warming gas) than a conventional coal- or natural gas-fueled power plant. EPA and DOE believe that the fuel cell-turbine hybrid could be the forerunner of a new class of “distributed power generation,” where small power plants are sited where the electricity is used. Interest in distributed generation is growing as the power industry develops new ways to supply affordable, highly-reliable electricity in a competitive, deregulated marketplace. During the next decade, the U.S. distributed generation market is estimated to grow from 5,000 to 10,000 megawatts per year.

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