U.S. Missing Opportunity to Recycle Vast Amounts of Energy

Author photo Written by Carol Gulyas
Published on May 25th, 2008
5 Comments
Posted in Energy Efficiency

images.jpgOn Wednesday I attended an event on Green Technology sponsored by the Midwest Council of the American Electronics Association. Vincent Albanese, SVP of Air Pollution Control at Fuel Tech, a company that produces air pollution control devices for large power generators and heavy industry, shared some startling information and insight:

  • Congress is missing opportunities to save energy because of its narrow focus on achieving carbon-emission goals thirty years in the future.
  • Older manufacturing companies have no incentive to clean up their plants because the EPA’s New Source Review rule requires that with any physical changes made, companies have to add all new technology.

New source review sounds good to us environmentalists, but in practice it makes rust belt companies avoid upgrades in their current operations that would save vast amounts of energy, because of the expense involved in completely revamping their entire operations.

The next day NPR aired a story on waste heat capture. ArcolorMittal, a European-based steel company with a plant in East Chicago, Indiana, has placed boilers above its coke ovens to capture the intense heat generated by them — heat which used to be entirely lost. The heat is used to generate steam which turns turbines that create electricity. Further, the NPR story quotes Tom Riley, ArcelorMittal’s manager of utilities:

“‘We can produce almost a hundred megawatts of electrical generation out of the steam that’s produced off the waste heat that we’re capturing here today.’ That’s enough electricity to power more than 60,000 homes, according to Department of Energy Statistics. Recent EPA and DOE 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.”

In this, as in so many areas, we are behind our friends in Europe and Japan. According to NPR, Denmark generates nearly 55 percent of its electricity through heat recovery; in the Netherlands and Finland the figure is nearly 40 percent, and in Germany 35 percent. In the U.S. figure is only 8 percent., according to the Department of Energy. While we are pressuring Congress for laws providing incentives for renewable energy, let’s not forget the impact of waste heat recycling, and the legislation that needs to occur to make it more widespread. (Image from Minneapolis Public Radio.)

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5 Responses to “U.S. Missing Opportunity to Recycle Vast Amounts of Energy”

  1. Mike Says:
    May 25th, 2008 at 9:34 pm

    Interesting stuff. It’s good to see that we’re looking into harvesting some of that energy that would otherwise be lost from our current processes, even though we’re being a little sluggish with implementation. Wow, 200,000MW down the drain.

  2. Uncle B Says:
    May 26th, 2008 at 11:28 am

    American engineering schools have been hi-jacked by ‘bigger is better’ resource baron stockholders’ attitudes. The theory that ‘waste is OK since we own it anyway’ and the sad idea that ‘we can do things any way we want because no one else can do it’ do not meet the Made in China/India/Russia acid test! This deepening depression will temper American lifestyles, philosophies and curriculum so as to prevent this reckless ‘damn the guns’, cowboy diplomacy, new-world ‘land of plenty’ attitude as displayed by Pres. Bush, to a more ecologically conscientious , good neighbor, non-combative, and socially responsible tone. The engineers can then use good engineering principles to resolve problems in the best fashion possible and with realistic criteria. Once forced by the circumstances of the world,to face facts, Americans will reach even greater heights and dominate the 21st Century

  3. Al Fin Says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 10:58 am

    Good point. Waste heat to power is one of the main emphasis of practical energy policy. When Congress wears an ideological straightjacket, it doesn’t care about results. It just cares about ideological purity. Environmentalism is full of ideological purists who could not care less about real world results.

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