Wednesday, October 13, 1999
2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m., SC-4 U.S. Capitol Building

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute invites you to a Congressional briefing concerning district energy as an opportunity to stimulate urban economic development, protect the environment, and improve electric system reliability. These are all significant issues as Congress debates electric utility restructuring. This briefing is also co-sponsored by the Northeast-Midwest House and Senate Coalitions and the International District Energy Association.

The expert panel features:

• Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-MA), former mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts;

• Mark Spurr, legislative director, International District Energy Association; vice president, Kattner\FVB District Energy Inc.;

• Rob Thornton, chairman, International District Energy Association; president, Northwind Boston; and

• Dan Adamson, deputy assistant secretary, Office of Power Technologies, US Department of Energy.

District energy utilizes combined heat and power (CHP) technology to distribute steam, hot water, and chilled water from a central power plant to individual buildings through a network of pipes. CHP systems capture waste heat from power plants to increase their energy efficiency to 60-90 percent. Conventional fossil-fired power plants are only about 30 percent efficient, losing two-thirds of their energy in the form of waste heat.

Capturing the waste heat in power production and thereby increasing a power plant's efficiency offers substantial benefits to the community. District energy helps to protect the environment by significantly reducing emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and carbon dioxide. District energy also stimulates economic growth and urban revitalization through labor-intensive development, the construction of an energy efficient infrastructure, lower building development costs and stable, cost-competitive operating costs. These systems also increase energy security and cost stability by increasing the flexibility to use a variety of energy sources, including renewable resources.

As the U.S. Congress looks at the current electricity industry and begins to contemplate deregulation, district energy systems offer an opportunity to significantly improve reliability. These systems reduce electric distribution bottlenecks by generating local power, deliver cooling energy through reliable, non-electric means, and shift the load from on-peak to off-peak, thereby providing a highly reliable energy source to the nation's energy mix.

The briefing is open to the public. Reservations are not required. For more information, contact Beth Bleil at (202) 662-1886 or by email at bbleil@eesi.org.