Energy Affairs and the Environment

The United States Congress has passed several laws during the past two decades which have had a tremendous impact on our air, water and land. These laws are: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. It has commonly been felt that the civil and environmental engineering professions have been the major benefactors of the new crusade for innovative technologies that were spawned from the passing of these new laws. This has not necessarily been the case; energy engineers have benefited more than any other profession. A quick review of the different laws reveals the many new areas in which it has become common for the energy engineer to become intimately involved. Several of the more celebrated examples of this involvement are resource recovery, either through mass burn technology or refuse derived fuels, direct incineration of hazardous wastes, the use of anaerobic wastewater treatment to recover by-product methane, the need for more advanced methods of scrubbing SO2 and NOx out of off-gasses, etc. It appears that during the past few years environmental and energy affairs have become linked together. The longevity of this linkage may ultimately be up to the creators of the initial union, the U.S. Congress. New, more restrictive legislation will undoubtedly serve to strengthen the already tight bond between environmental and energy affairs