When power plants generate electricity, a lot of heat simply goes up the chimney, so to speak. Estimates are that for every three units of fuel — like coal, natural gas or oil — that are burned to make electricity, two are lost in the process, most of it as waste heat that just drifts away. Likewise, many manufacturing operations such as steel mills produce waste heat.
Ten years ago, an Indiana steel mill began capturing heat above its coke ovens to make electricity. That operation, along with other energy recycling processes employed at the plant, creates about 250 megawatts of power every day, about half of the plant’s needs for electricity. In the process, the company says it has reduced CO2 emissions by 1.3 million tons a year.
What would happen if more companies and electric utilities captured heat and used it to make electricity? It’s a common practice in Europe. Denmark generates close to 55 percent of its electricity this way. In the Netherlands and Finland, the figure is closer to 40 percent, and in Germany it is 35 percent. But, energy recycling in the U.S. accounts for only 8 percent of the nation’s electrical power, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Recent EPA and Department of Energy studies suggest U.S. industries waste enough heat to generate an estimated 200,000 megawatts of power — nearly 20 percent of what this nation uses. That’s enough electricity to replace up to 400 coal-fired power plants.
So what’s the problem?
State and federal laws often prohibit companies like the Indiana steel mill from selling excess power, and few electric utilities have chosen to install energy recycling equipment at older power plants because under New Source Review, they will then be subject to newer, stricter environmental regulations.
We recycle beverage cans. Wouldn’t it make even more sense to recycle energy, to use the waste heat that goes up the chimney to produce electricity and, in the process, save millions of tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere?
May 28, 2008 at 4:21 am
Would it be against the utilities interest to do this? Would it be comparable to how we’re seeing too much conservation screwing up bond payments with water providers?
If industry — maybe even households if it was cost-effective — reduce demand and conserve energy, would it hinder the big power providers’ ability to pay off the bonds issued to build power plants?
May 28, 2008 at 2:53 pm
We see this as ultimately benefiting the utilities’ bottom line while reducing carbon emissions.
Power production is terribly ineffecient and power companies would more than likely be very much in favor of more efficient electrical production.
They way we see it, they’ve already paid for the fuel. Their energy production per ton of coal would increase vastly. Maybe this could even reduce the need to build additional power plants down the road.
We’re no power company, but we’ve heard from CEOs (specifically Interface’s Ray Anderson) who appreciate the cost-savings from strides towards reducing waste and increasing effeciencies.
May 28, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I gather that you got some of this info from the recent NPR feature on Tom Casten and Recycled Energy Development (RED). I’m associated with RED, and I think this is a great post. But I wanted to clarify the position of the utilities in all this. In essence, the laws are now designed to protect monopoly utilities. They’re the only ones allowed to build electric wires across public streets; they’re the only ones whose investments are guaranteed; they’re the only ones who are legally allowed to pass a good chunk of their costs on to consumers, who have no choice but to buy the electricity. As a result, utilities really have no incentive to be efficient; why cut costs when you can just pass them on to a captive consumer base? Accordingly, utilities do NOT like energy recyclers at the moment, because companies like RED are basically just competition — selling power at a lower price and reducing the overall need for electricity.
Moreover, utility-run power plants, though they could be modified a bit to become more efficient, will never be optimal. The reason is that heat doesn’t travel well — and these “centralized” plants are so far removed from consumers that much of the waste heat would still have to be thrown away. What makes energy recycling plants so efficient is they are ON SITE at manufacturing facilities, hospitals, universities, etc., thereby allowing the plant to capture ITS OWN waste heat and use it not just to make electricity but also to provide heat to area buildings.
So, that’s a long way of saying: yes, efficiency in theory should be great for the utilities and for anyone else who produces power, but the regulations right now are such that utilities have little need or ability to be efficient. And that’s what we have to change; adjust the rules of the game, and the players will act differently.