Advanced Power Generation Technologies: Fuel Cells

Abstract

Dependency of the current sophisticated society and the standard of living on energy infrastructure development is going to continue in the future. According to the World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world’s total electricity consumption will double between 2003 and 2030, growing at an average rate of 2.7% per year (IEA, 2006). Conventionally, the majority of electricity is generated by thermal fossil fuel power stations. However, global climate change and natural resource pollution as well as decline of fossil fuel resources cause significant worldwide concerns about the current trend in energy system development. As a result of the aforementioned issues, sustainability considerations should be involved in all major energy development plans around the world. There are various definitions for sustainability. Probably the simplest one is that sustainable activities are the activities that help the existing generation to meet their needs without destroying the ability of future generations to meet theirs. The IEA stated that global energy-related CO2 emission would increase by 55% between 2003 and 2030 (IEA, 2006). This shows that conventional power plants using current technologies cannot address current environmental constraints. Therefore, they should be replaced by new and more environmentally benign technologies. Ultimately, renewable energies are environmentally friendly candidates for sustainable electricity generation. But their applications have been limited by some major drawbacks, such as availability, reliability, and cost, at least in the shortand mid-term future. According to IEA, the share of renewable electrical energy in the world will experience a slight decrease from 23% in 2003 to 22% in 2030. On the other hand, the same report predicted that the share of fossil fuels as energy supplies for electricity generation would remain constant at nearly 65%. Global energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would increase by 1.7% per year and would reach 40 Gt in 2030, a 54% increase over the 2004 level (IEA, 2006; Gale, 2002; Bauer, 2005). Thus, both fossil and non-fossil forms of energy will be needed in the foreseeable future to meet global energy demand. That is why IEA has commented that “numerous technology solutions offer substantial CO2-reduction potentials, including renewable energies, more efficient power generation, fossil-fuel use with CO2 capture and storage, nuclear fission,