Going climate-friendly saves money and the planet 10 March 05

I was preparing a course, “Business & the Environment” in the early 90s, & came across many examples. But the process works like this. A company grudgingly has to meet new environmental standards, so they start thinking how to do so without losing too much money. Then when their business minds really start clicking, they come up with lots of money-saving ways to do it. 3M (not the darling of environmentalists) told its employees to come up with the cheapest ways to reduce pollution (thinking it would cost them something). From the top engineers to the assembly line workers, they started finding all these ways that ended up saving them $1 million (or was it $1 billion) per year. When the top guys asked the engineers why they hadn’t come up with those ideas earlier (in the pre-enviro law context & just from the money-saving point of view), the answer was, “It wasn’t put that way to us.” They call their program 3P – Pollution Prevention Pays. Dow has WRAP (Waste Reduction Always Pays).

A plating firm in Mass. was badly polluting the river, but had to think up something because a new environmental law was kicking in. They tried reducing their water flow, but weren’t able to meet the strict standard. Then they came up with a $100,000 closed loop system, whereby they filtered out the pollution (which became a valuable resource) and recycled the water. It paid for itself in water saving within a year, and went on to save them more money. About a year after installation, the water main in the city broke & the city was without water for 3 days – but the company was able to stay in production because of their system, saving them $200,000 that they would have lost without the system.

You can find lots of examples in Business Week (esp under their Science & Technology section) in the early to mid 1990s. Since then environmentalism has faded, and so too the savings companies & household could be realizing.

of what appears to be a coal-fired electric generating plant. I say appears to be because I cannot see the transmission lines. They may be there but the picture quality will not allow me to see them.

The photograph shows one large boiler exhaust stack (the tall slender light colored structure in the right-center), a boiler house, a coal pile and 10 hyperbolic cooling towers. Nine of the 10 cooling towers are active so the plant clearly was operating at near its capacity at the time of the photo.

I know that the cooling towers are active because I can see the steam plumes. The steam plumes form because part of the cooling water evaporates in the cooling tower and re-condenses as the plume cools by dilution in the ambient air. Note that the steam plumes disappear within a hundred meters or so of the cooling towers. That means that the ambient air was relatively dry, which allowed the condensed water to re-evaporate quickly.

Of particular note is that none of the other potential exhaust points, the main stack, the coal pile, the conveyor system exhaust stacks or the main boiler stack is emitting a visible plume. The plant appears remarkably clean and well controlled.

You ask rhetorically, why more such plants do not switch to the co-generation process. The answer is because the heat wasted is of poor quality. That means that its temperature is so low, about 200 degrees C, that it has limited potential uses. The primary use of such energy is to provide hot water for heating buildings. I do not see a lot of buildings surrounding this particular plant, so I guess that is not an option for its operators.

Plants must be in metropolitan areas to take advantage of the waste heat. Of course, obtaining a permit to construct such a plant in a metropolitan area would be a challenge. If you can figure a way to get that done, let us know.

Constantin Gurdgiev has written an excellent article about the shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol for Tech Central Station. Anyone with any curiosity about the good points that those opposed to the protocol can read the article at, http://www.techcentralstation.com/030805.html.

of the process I outlined above – the “grudging change to something that works out much better.”

In the 1980s they found an ancient ship (boat) sunk off the coast of Turkey. It was a transition boat. In the earlier era they would carve an entire log to get one very heavy curved plank, which they would peg together with other planks. They used slave labor to do the tremendous amount of work. Then they used up nearly all the trees, which forced them to slice several thinner planks out of a single log, which made them come up with ribs on which to bend & fit the planks. Furthermore the labor was much less, so the need for more & more slaves diminished (& military operations to get the slaves).

This new boat with less wood was actually stronger & more seaworthy, and without this grudginly innovated technology boats would not have been able to sail across the Atlantic. Well, maybe that was sort of a bad deal for the Native Americans.

Dump your pointer on the picture and a little box will pop up reading “Coal fired power station”.

I would hope there is no smoke coming from the coal pile as that would indicate things were pretty out of control! Having lived near a similar plant (Didcot) I know it is often the case that the smoke plume isn’t readily visible as it is a light grey which mingles better with the back ground on a cloudy day, or in a dark photo such as this. The cooling tower steam is far more obvious. I don’t see what any of this has to do with the plant’s CO2 emissions anyway which are entirely dependent on the amount of coal consumed, regardless of how well or otherwise the plant is run.

Mark I believe the main obstacle to investment in upgrading US coal fired power plants is to do with government guarantees on their continued use, given to the operators when they were last upgraded/built.

I am just finishing an excellent book “Power to the people” by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the energy and environment correspondant for the Economist. He details exactly why such upgrades are practically uncontemplatable until the investment cycle is over and when it is time to reinvest again. (20 years away in most cases).

Retrofiting would only be possible therefore with government funding. Unlikely to happen in the current US political climate!

Norbert you are correct in what you posted. However, as usual, you mostly share only the downside to this story.

Cogeneration is mostly applied to industries which need low level steam for certain processing and instead of fuel being used for only this, the fuel is used to generate electricity for that industry and the waste heat is a by-product used within that industry. Their excess electricity can also be sold to others at a profit.

My college campus had a small coal power plant that provided not only space heating but that heat was used to run an absorption air conditioning system using ammonia as the refrigerant. So the plant’s waste heat not only provided space heating but space cooling as well.

I have read research papers decades ago about the use of waste heat from a power plant to actually produce fuel through thermo-chemical processes. Hydrogen I believe. The efficiency of conversion was rather poor if I remember correctly.

Ideas such as this still could be developed further and may have merit for larger power plants not near industries or near municipal areas. However, it may be possible for certain industries to locate near the larger power plant enabling cogeneration to become possible!

Developing a cleaner power plant aesthetically designed to fit within the metropolitan area would be a necessary condition that would be important to make this concept more appealing and acceptable for heating and cooling buildings. The transportation of fuel and available space for the plant at the location can be intractable problems. Not all these conditions are easily met but in some cases they can be met!

The best applications for cogeneration are still industries that can use the waste heat for other purposes as mentioned earlier and that can include space heating and cooling as well. The best approach is to research all industries where smaller power plants can be of benefit and be economically viable.

Another more global benefit is when enough of these smaller plants prevent the construction of a larger power plant because all these smaller plants add to the electric grid and the financing can be shared between the energy producer and the energy user since both may have mutual economic interests at stake.

Norbert, at least I find agreement in what you wrote was correct but just incomplete. With that said, I see that you are making progress!

Later, Dan

to a coal power plant, and NOPEs (not on planet earth) would much prefer wind or solar power.

But how about having some greenhouses near the facility. Then the hot water could heat them during winter, and there you have it, produce grown close to the city – organic, of course, using manure from all those disgusting pig factories – which also solves that organic produce from distant lands problem. And plants just love CO2. Of course, the S2O would have to be scrubbed as much as possible.

I understand you are retired, Mr. Norbert, & perhaps not up to creative thinking any more, but at least don’t dampen the younger people’s spirit of adventure of daring to go where no man has gone before – the ration, cost effective solutions to real problems, such as global warming. Afterall, it’s the young who will be saddled with this problem caused by the old (like myself).

Power plants can max out their efficiency at 40 percent of the energy derived from the fuel. More often, this energy in the form of electricity is delivered at 25 percent of the fuel’s original energy to the consumer when transmission losses are considered. This is why a fuel used directly for heating purposes is usually a better choice than electricity,

Cogeneration is a concept whereby some of the waste heat from the cooling towers or a water-body heat exchanger is used directly for another purpose. This is important since this waste heat which cannot create electricity using a turbine-generator is higher than the energy consumed to create that electricity to begin with.

In my example, the waste heat would be at least 60 percent of the fuel’s combustion energy. When this waste heat is better utilized then the energy efficiency of the combustion of the fuel increases and we get more usefulness out of any fuel source which in turn lowers emissions.

There is potential from cogeneration to double the efficiency over using the fuel to just make electricity and relating that to emissions would be around a 50 percent reduction in emissions if you follow my line of reasoning!

Nuclear power plants could also be cogeneration but I think this may be a drawback to nuclear energy because there may be problems in using the waste heat if it spreads radioactivity.

In that light, cogeneration seems more suitable to non-nuclear power plants. But the idea is still possible for nuclear ones if the waste heat is used for an industrial process and any radioactivity can be contained.

FYI, I usually leave the door wide open for innovation to solve a problem and that is why you may never find me prematurely negating any technology or any idea if the downside to them has the potential of being solved. Most of the time, I think this is true even if we currently cannot see a solution to a problem.

Even compact fluorescent lights contain mercury and these bulbs must be disposed of properly so the toxic mercury can be recycled to make more bulbs.

My post is meant as an educational one and may not be directed at your post correctly. However, your post brought up these points that I thought may be of benefit to others.

Best Regards, Dan

I really began to recognize how senile I have become when I read your last post. It seems that I needed someone with your insight to point it out to me. Thank you very much.

My post was not about my resistance to innovation. Lord knows that the differences between the world now and the world that I grew up in are huge and beneficial.

It never ceases to amaze me that the folks who are clamoring for ratification of Kyoto can look at the changes that our technology has undergone in the last 50 years, nay 20 years, and seemingly believe that we are going to freeze in this mode and continue it for the next 100 years. That freezing of technology and amplification of its extent is endemic in the IPCC process. There is no allowance anywhere in the projection schemes for changing technology. I find that incredible. How can anyone believe it?

What you and Mark fail to understand is that all of those innovations occurred because some imaginative and creative person perceived a need to find a better way to do something and figured out a way to respond to that need and make a profit in the bargain.

As much as Socialists abhor the concept of profit, profit drives us all. You might think that altruism is a powerful force that influences our behavior, but it is not true. We all do those things that we perceive to be in our best interest. Few persons would invest their time and money in an endeavor that is not likely to provide a monetary return.

As much as you and Mark hate to believe it, no one is going to develop a technology or change his behavior merely because you believe that you have the moral high ground and that implementation of your ideas will improve the human condition.

Mark thinks that electric utilities refuse to consider co-generation because of some inertial resistance to change, or perhaps pure meanness coupled with a desire to destroy the planet. It makes me wonder whom he believes developed the co gen concept in the first place. It was not a government bureaucrat.

You think that the electric utilities should import pig doots and use the waste heat to grow hothouse tomatoes. You should study the concept, perform the cost/benefit analyses and entice a venture capitalist to finance your development of the technology.

Both of you fail to understand that both schemes would cost more than they could return and for that reason, are not likely to happen.

The primary obstacle is government insistence that any modification to any electric generator include retrofit installation of prohibitively expensive air pollution control equipment. The utilities find it more economical to continue using the antiquated and inefficient equipment as long as they can nurse them along.

Let’s do an analogy. Suppose the carburetor on your car was faulty and causing the engine to consume excessive gasoline and was causing the emission of excessive amounts of air pollutants. Suppose that the government told you that before you could replace the carburetor that you had to install the thousands of dollars worth of computerized engine control and catalytic converter equipment present on the newest automobiles. Would you spend the money or would you limp along paying a few dollars a month more for gasoline?

The cost of power generated by those facilities is much higher than the cost of generation in new and efficient equipment. For that reason, the utility companies generate their base load with the newer equipment and fire up the old stuff during peak hours when regulatory agencies allow them to charge more for the power.

See my other posts on this topic. What I found (to my surprise, as well as they surprise of businesses) is that restrictions (such as environmental laws or the fairly mild Kyoto Protocol requirements) actually spur innovation in a direction that helps us all.

Another issue, since it seems you are concerned about too much regulation & government interferrence, without a little bit of that now, we may be facing really restrictive & oppressive laws in the future. I just started THE GALILEO SYNDROME, and it is really depressing with its very repressive “Green Laws” – enacted because our generation refused to lift their little fingers to address the issue of global warming. As a social scientist, I know that is what happens if people don’t voluntarily try to behave or correct a problem – then the government kicks in when the problem becomes enormous & becomes autocratic. So what many are suggesting here is to voluntarily deal with the problem, esp. in cost-effective ways, & perhaps with a bit of gov. regs & incentives, before the problem gets so big as to require a dictatorship to deal with it. Now is it worth risking a dictatorship on the younger generations? Why not put our minds to solving this problem in ways that solve many other problems & save us money, rather than discouraging everyone?

In principle, I believe the main thrust of Mark’s blog, but I think we need to be careful not to underestimate the very significant investment costs & challenges to move to a new Energy economy. It is going to take a lot of figuring out to do it cost-effectively!

A couple of quick comments about this:

1. In terms of industry, I think it is misleading to think of “dark forces at work”. We should think in terms of how various bodies and industries have different interests. For example, those utilities running old style coal-fired stations have a legitimate responsibility to look after the livelihood of themselves and their workers. We need to figure out appropriate incentives etc. for them to clean-up their acts.

2. On the consumer level, there is a difference between “consumption” expenditure and “investment” expenditure. For quite a while I have been trying to figure out how to change my house into a zero CO2 emission house. I keep changing my mind about the best way to do this – and I don’t think I am going to get much change out of £15,000. I think I have found out a way that this is cost-effective – but it is still a lump of cash I have to find.

Also, technology is improving in this area – especially with PV technology. I don’t want to be the guy that pays £1,000 for his DVD player, when, if I waited a little while, I could pay £100!

Hello Norbert and Peter,

I agree with both points concerning economic disincentives to investing in either new technology or retro-fitting old plant with ‘performance enhancing’ equipment.

You are right about the heirarchy of generation within a grid system. The ‘spinning reserve’ (Power stations on-line with turbines running in synch but not generating) that was kept as a constant standby for peaks in grid demand, was managed on a descending efficiency basis. Base load generation was run by the latest,most fuel-efficient kit, with older and progressively more inefficient plants only coming on line to meet surges. When the UK generating system was a nationalised industry (the CEGB, and later versions) Capacity, supply and demand were managed strategically. The spinning reserve was kept at a seasonally variable margin that meant we were seldom caught out by sudden cold weather. Not the most cost- efficient method, but that’s central planning for you. With the break up & privatisation of the UK energy industry in the 1980’s & 90’s, generators sold power at the best price by the Kwh generated into a constantly changing supply market. Keeping a spinning reserve was a major cost factor (especially since it was the most expensive plants that were kept idling) so this was pared to the bone. The ‘Dash for Gas’ generation in the 90’s produced a rash of new NG powered plants, many of which now stand idle and unused because the wholesale electricity price is now below the economic generating threshold given the cost of NG and is likely to stay below it for a while yet. As a result we have 1) a supply capacity that sails so close to the wind in terms of meeting peak demand it even scares the government and 2) an industry that is now very wary of any major capital investment until it sees which way the wind is blowing (pun intended).

How to break this deadlock?

Suggestion (not mine): since a massive proportion of centrally generated electricity is lost through the grid distribution process (up to 30% I believe) then there is a much stronger case for developing smaller scale, local generating capacity to meet primarily local base load demand, and reducing the grid rating to meeting either inflow or outflow peak demand (trading between communities). The capital costs for developing new plant are proportionally less, as is therefore the risk from having to absorb development costs out of profits. The amount of generated power actually being paid for by local users should be higher, due to decreased transmission losses, so this should partly off-set the investment costs in new kit. If this kind of programme were phased in over say, 20-25 years, it could go a long way towards being self-financing. Taking older plant off-line could be staggered and supported by state grants (better to pay to take unwanted capacity out of the grid than pay to put more in) over the period. This concept is actually within the UK government energy white paper (draft bill) published last Summer. The problem is, making it happen.

In terms of making a domestic investment, Peter, have you contacted either the Energy Saving Trust (www.est.org.uk) or your local energy efficiency advisory council? there are some community groups who are clubbing together to buy/lease equipment to get better unit costs. If you are having trouble finding help, I can do some digging for you.

Finally, did you have a think about ideas for traffic congestion reduction Norbert? I was in Edinburgh last Monday, and the two taxi drivers I spoke to won’t work during peak periods, because they cannot get to fares in time to pick them up as the congestion in the old city is so bad!

all best wishes

Colin

The skeptics’ little “too expensive” argument is shredded to pieces. Let us shed tears for them…NOT!

These days, the more I hear an argument against being eco-friendly, the more certain I am that it’s NOT true, or they’d not be protesting so much…sure enough, here’s another deflated myth! (The one where they said satellite data contradicted ground data-then they found out the satellites were programmed wrong-was the classic one for me!)

Pity their protests couldn’t have been shot down back when something could’ve actually been DONE to mitigate GW/CC. Now we’re upon peak oil, and everyone’s talking up coal and nuclear—those real eco-friendly sources! (roll eyes) But it’s still nice to see another “solid argument” bite the dust….

Hello Peter,

I am half-way through a rebuild on my house which I am progressively trying to work towards being carbon neutral. It will take me probably ten years in all, but since it was semi-derelict when I bought it, a lot of the cost would have to have been met anyway, even with conventional materials.

Anyway, just a couple of sites that might be of interest: Bedzed, a zero energy housing development in South London that’s attracting a lot of attention: www.bedzed.org and the website of the social housing charity that is behind it, the peabody trust: http://www.peabody.org.uk/main/index.htm

kind regards

Colin

Hello Lynn,

I’ve noticed that you have commented several times on the lack awareness of GW and related issues in Texas, and we certainly only get the ‘no problem proven’ line given by the Whitehouse in the press over here, so I was very interested to hear about the numers of organisations and groups at city and state level in the US who are actually getting together to take action.

I know you read the Realclimate blog: see posts 45 & 46 uder ‘the last word for now’ where contributors have kindly put up some extremely informative links.

very encouraging.

kind regards

Colin

Appreciate the response.

I am not a builder myself, and I find a lot of the time I am trying to adapt an “off the shelf” product (such a ground source heat pump) to the specific needs of my house – and see if it really works. Fortunately one of my neighbours has just installed a similar system, and it is enormously helpful speaking with him.