cogeneration
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Me, on the radio in Oregon
Hear Bruce Silverman interview me on Portland’s KBOO FM on the opportunities for waste energy recovery — specifically in the wood products, pulp, and paper industries in the state. (Special Bonus: plug for Grist at 18:40 or so!)
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Energy efficiency is the core climate solution, part 1
Energy efficiency is the most important climate solution for several reasons:
- It is by far the biggest resource.
- It is by far the cheapest, far cheaper than the current cost of unsustainable energy, so cheap that it helps pay for the other solutions.
- It is by far the fastest to deploy.
- It is "renewable" -- the efficiency potential never runs out.
This post focuses on number one -- the tremendous size of the resource.
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The human-scale, renewable, domestic power systems reviving rural Austrian economies
Listen Play “Lonely Goatherd,” from The Sound of Music On a sunny Saturday afternoon in Salzburg, we took a field trip to a few examples of biomass in rural Austria. The country is over 40 percent forested, and over half of the forest is owned by small farmers with less than 40 hectares (just under […]
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Forbes on utility objections to combined heat and power
Forbes has a nice story about the historic barriers that electric utilities have thrown up to block efficient power generation. This is nothing new to those of us "in the trenches," but it is nice to see this topic aired from more visible podiums. It's worth the time to read for anyone who thinks that the only barrier to low-carbon generation is technological development.
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Development in waste-heat-to-electricity technology
Here's a 200 year old idea with merit: A Stirling engine, modified to capture the waste heat of industrial processes to make electricity. Gar noted Stirling Energy Systems' efforts in this vein to make electricity from solar thermal collectors using a Stirling engine a year ago, but instead of the sun, a startup in my neighborhood, ReGen, is developing a Stirling that will specialize in using the low to moderate heat generated by landfill gas systems, paper mills, steel mills, chemical and petroleum refining facilities, glass ovens, cement plants, and similar locations:
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Cogeneration and ethanol production
I am not the biggest fan of corn ethanol. But I am the biggest fan of cogeneration, also known as combined heat and power, or CHP (well, maybe the second-biggest fan). It is probably the single most overlooked strategy for sharply cutting greenhouse-gas emissions while reducing overall energy costs.
Now a new EPA report finds that running an ethanol plant on natural gas CHP can, with the right design, result in negative net CO2 emissions (click on figure to enlarge).
Important caveat: "Impact of Combined Heat and Power on Energy Use and Carbon Emissions in the Dry Mill Ethanol Process" (PDF) does not examine the energy consumed (or emissions generated) from growing and harvesting the corn or from transporting the corn or ethanol. Still, with CHP, corn ethanol can actually generate significant CO2 reductions compared to gasoline.
If Congress is serious about promoting ethanol in a manner that actually reduces GHGs, they should require all new ethanol plants to cogenerate.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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A man ahead of his times
I've always thought that Edison's notion of using DC instead of AC would've resulted in a better energy situation -- more locally produced power through cogeneration and other sources, and better storage capability. But this New York Times piece on how he worked to build an electric car, and his dream of powering every house with its own wind generator, puts him squarely ahead of his time.
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The latest on smart grids, microgrids, and nerd grids
Three good bits from the smart grid front. First up, there’s a new report out from the California Energy Commission called Distributed Generation and Cogeneration Policy Roadmap for California (PDF). Hot reading! The New Rules Project has a nice write-up on it. See also the NRP’s section on barriers to distributed generation. Next up, five […]