Recycling (Reusing) Waste Energy
Profitably Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Presentation to House Climate Change Caucus
By: Thomas R. Casten
March 6, 2008
Matt Rogers showed 78 approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, half of which save
money. Most involve using electricity and thermal energy more efficiently.
The elephant in the room is the highly inefficient production of electricity and thermal energy.
Only two of McKinsey’s 78 approaches address the efficiency of producing electricity and
thermal energy. Today’s electric-only generation is wasteful and costly, and is needlessly forcing
climate change. Energy waste, however, also represents an economic opportunity.
Everyone seems to know about electric plant waste. This nuclear plant employs Homer
Simpson. Notice how cooling towers that reject heat dominate.
Homer Simpson’s Power Plant with Cooling Tower Waste
This picture below of an electric-only generation plant in Craig, Colorado, shows the enormous
waste. Two thirds of the fuel’s energy is vented to atmosphere.
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Electric Plant, Craig, Colorado
The electric industry has apparently reached the thermodynamic limits of central generation
efficiency in the 1950’s. Efficiency has not increased by one percentage point in 50 years.
Electric generation waste grows in importance as electricity replaces other energy forms. The
percentage of CO2 emissions from electric generation rose from 11% to 42% since 1949.
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Growth of US Electric Generation
The other large source of CO2 emission is thermal production. By 2005, 69% of US fossil
greenhouse gas emissions were from the generation of heat and power. Compare 69% to the
19% from automobiles, which were the main focus of the 2007 Energy Act. We are missing the
elephant in the room.
We must reduce electric generation waste to mitigate climate change.
There is good news. We can do two jobs with one fire. Combined heat and power plants (CHP)
near thermal loads achieve double efficiency by recycling the byproduct thermal energy to
displace boiler fuel. Waste energy recycling plants convert industrial waste energy into heat and
power with no additional fossil fuel, and create added revenue for manufacturers.
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The next picture shows a facility we built at a coke plant in Indiana. The plant’s hot exhaust is
recycled to generate 95 megawatts of electricity and 900,000 pounds of steam, with no added
fossil fuel and no additional carbon dioxide.
This plant’s annual production of clean energy is roughly equal to all of the production of the
entire world’s grid-connected solar collectors in 2004. And, we sell the power to the steel mill
for 25% of average US retail electricity prices.
Cokenergy, Mittal Steel, Northern Indiana
Figure 1 - Energy Recycling at Mittal Steel, East Chicago, Indiana
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There are many more examples. Companies I have led have developed and invested two billion
dollars in 250 energy recycling plants that are all over North America. The worst is twice as
efficient as the US electric system. Each year, these plants save over 60 trillion Btus of fossil
fuel, avoid over 50 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and save the industrial and
commercial hosts nearly $400 million.
The next chart plots some of these plants that we developed against the grid’s stagnant electric
efficiency.
Here is a final example of profitably reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is one of five
furnaces at an 80-year-old silicon plant in Alloy, West Virginia. The furnaces consume a total of
135 megawatts of electricity to melt quartz rock and produce silicon for computer chips, solar
cells and 1500 other products.
Top of a Silicon Furnace
Electricity, coal and wood chips
melt quartz in a large furnace
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We are investing $60 million to recycle the furnace heat into 40 megawatts of clean energy. We
will sell the power to the factory at a fixed price for the next 25 years, making them the lowest
cost producer of silicon in the world. The factory will use the extra power to open a sixth
furnace and add 30 industrial jobs. By recycling waste heat, we are taking silicon production
back from China.
US Energy Recycling Potential
We have identified opportunities to build $350 billion of energy recycling projects, using proven
technology. These projects would reduce society’s cost of heat and power by $70 billion per
year and double the 1.3 gigatons of profitable greenhouse reductions identified by the McKinsey
study. This is a huge opportunity to profitably reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Why Does Inefficiency Prevail?
This opportunity raises the obvious question: why does inefficiency prevail?
Our energy laws and regulations are outmoded, designed for an era before climate change was an
issue. Changing those rules and regulations will not be easy because, as Senators know better
than anyone, policy losers scream louder than the winners cheer.
Nowhere is the task more difficult than in the debate about the so-called costs of greenhouse gas
reduction. Profitably lowering greenhouse gas emissions means burning less fossil fuel, which
means we must increase the efficiency of converting fossil fuel into useful energy services. This
will create massive economic gain... but with a wealth transfer from fossil fuel producers and
inefficient energy converters to energy efficiency entrepreneurs and to energy consumers.
The good news is that the winners outnumber the losers. But our national energy policy has
created some very powerful vested interests.
In my humble view, the economic and environmental health of our country depends on how fast
government modernizes energy regulations to give clean energy a chance.
I hope we can discuss opportunities for Congress to encourage energy-efficiency entrepreneurs
and help America profitably reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We stand ready to help.
Thank you.
Thomas R. Casten, Chairman
Recycled Energy Development LLC
740 Quail Ridge Drive, Westmont, IL 60559
Phone: 630-590-6031, Fax: 630-590-6037
www.recycled-energy.com
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