The latest news in clean energy policy & legislation
Chicago Council on Global Affairs names RED’s Craig Bennett an “Emerging Leader” — Established in 2008 with support from the McCormick Foundation, the goal of the Chicago Council’s Emerging Leaders Program is to identify and engage future leaders from the government, private, and nonprofit sectors who will help Chicago compete and thrive in the global era. Each Emerging Leaders two-year class examines, discusses, and makes recommendations on timely policy issues—including energy and the environment, the global economy, foreign policy, and migration. This isn't the first time someone from RED has been named an Emerging Leader…Sean Casten, RED’s president, is a member of the Class of 2009. Read more.
Energy efficiency critical to U.S. economy — Tom Casten appeared on MSNBC along with T. Boone Pickens and Peter Diamandis of the X Prize Foundation to discuss solutions to the energy crisis. Tom said, “We really need to understand that the issue is our utility and regulatory system. Utilities got to 34 percent efficiency when Eisenhower was in the White House. They’re still at the same level today. We throw away two-thirds of the energy and it causes many of the problems we have... You [need to] build power plants where you can recycle the heat the way Edison did... Efficiency has to be the fuel of the future." Read more.
The Other Green Energy — Fox News visits the energy recycling project at the Arcelor Mittal steel plant in Indiana, and notes that recycled energy, which it calls “The Other Green Energy,” has massive potential to slash energy costs and carbon emissions at the same time. Fox interviewed RED’s Tom Casten, who explained that as a nation we are sending hundreds of billions of dollars worth of waste energy up in smoke every year when instead we could be capturing and turning it into useful, clean power. “We are the Saudi Arabia of waste heat,” he said. “You can either use it or lose it.” Read more.
The Missing Efficiency — Energy efficiency advocates often seem to miss the big picture when looking for the best ways to get more bang for their energy buck, argues Dick Munson in an article in Electricity Journal. Conventional wisdom says it’s all about the little things — changing our light bulbs, for instance, or putting more insulation in our homes. Those are the hot ticket items that make environmentally-minded consumers feel like they’re making a difference. But the reality is we could do far more to cut global warming emissions if we paid attention to something far less sexy but far more consequential: the way power is actually generated. Read more.
America needs clean energy — Tom Casten writes in the Chicago Tribune that the dramatic images of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico serve as a stark reminder that America needs to transition to a new clean energy economy. It's time for Congress to get serious and enact a bill that will promote cleaner domestic power sources, cut our oil addiction and reduce global warming pollution. Waiting for tomorrow's leaders to solve today's problems will only increase the ultimate costs of tackling this challenge. (Photo of oil slick after spill in Gulf of Mexico courtesy Tasha Tully via Creative Commons license.) Read more.
Sean Casten at Virtual Energy Forum — Energy waste is pervasive, creating a massive opportunity for US industrials to lower their energy costs and reduce their CO2 footprint. In spite of this opportunity, our economic and environmental policies are largely in conflict with each other, framing a win for one as a loss for the other. Sean's presentation focussed on the fundamentals that are placing upward pressure on US electricity costs, and provide case studies of industrials who have taken control of their own energy future by recovering waste energy. Sean concluded with an overview of the broader industrial opportunity and how to capture it. Read more.
RED’s biomass acquisition — RED has acquired the 30-megawatt Honey Lake biomass power plant in Wendel, California. Built in 1989, the plant leverages nearby geothermal energy to help generate electricity from a biomass feedstock of forest thinnings, logging residue, mill wastes and other waste wood. RED plans to make a significant capital investment and put its team's extensive clean energy expertise to work enhancing the plant's efficiency and production. Among other improvements, RED will evaluate installing a waste heat recovery system that could significantly increase the plant's output of renewable energy. Potential project enhancements could also reduce California CO2 emissions by 44,000 metric tons per year. That is the equivalent of taking more than 8,000 cars off the road. Read more.
Diverse coalition pushes energy recycling bills to strengthen manufacturing competitiveness — Nearly 90 business, labor, environmental, and government organizations are urging Congress to adopt new tax policies to promote energy recycling. The diverse set of organizations sent letters to the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee asking for tax credits to expand use of combined heat and power (CHP) and waste energy recovery, which would vastly improve energy efficiency and productivity at industrial facilities. This legislation will create thousands of jobs, cut energy costs, and slash greenhouse gas emissions. Read more.
Fuel Swap — “Simply by ramping up our nation’s generation of electricity from underutilized natural gas plants and ramping down our generation from coal, the United States could reduce its total CO2 footprint by 14 to 20 percent tomorrow with no disruption in access to energy services and no new infrastructure investments.” So concludes Sean Casten in the latest issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly. He notes that the congressional proposal to reduce emissions by 17 percent over ten years is “constrained only by its ambition.” Read more.
When Gray is Green — In the latest issue of The Nation, Lisa Margonelli makes the case for increased use of “gray power” sources, especially waste heat, across the Midwest and South. Calling these regions “the Colossus of Carbon,” she cites a RED analysis revealing the immense amounts of electricity that could be generated from waste energy at manufacturing plants in places like Ohio. “All those smokestacks,” she says, “hold the potential for a lower-carbon renaissance.” Read more.
Bringing energy recycling to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) — RED Chairman Tom Casten recently led a symposium on energy recycling at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2010 annual meeting. Although conventional wisdom assumes that mitigating climate change will raise the cost of energy, this symposium will present a contrary view: that many proven technologies can substantially increase the efficiency of generating heat and power, cutting energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions simultaneously. View Tom's presentation "Gray Is the New Green: How Energy Recycling Curbs Both Global Warming and Power Costs. Read more.
A carbon-free future — RED public policy associate Melissa Mullarkey argues in Trends that capturing waste energy would help the U.S. transition into a carbon-free future. While we need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels entirely, that can’t happen overnight. In the meantime, we have to start making big reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions so we can avoid the worst effects of catastrophic climate change. Energy efficiency, Melissa says—especially through technologies like combined heat & power (aka cogeneration)—is the best way to get here. Read more.
RED featured in Chief Executive magazine — The massive potential of energy recycling — and the counter-productive barriers it faces — is explored in the current issue of Chief Executive. The piece, penned by libertarian journalist Ronald Bailey, features RED Chairman Tom Casten. "Utilities have traditionally made money on how much they invest, not how efficient they are," Tom is quoted as saying. "It's the only industry that increases its profits when a company redecorates its president's office." Read more.
Casten wins Platts Lifetime Achievement and Inspiring Efficiency leadership awards — Clean energy guru and RED founder Tom Casten has received the Platts Lifetime Achievement Award for his work creating ultra-efficient energy systems in the U.S. Over the past three decades at several energy firms, Tom has developed and managed 250 clean power projects valued at more than $2 billion. One of those projects at an Indiana steel plant generated more clean electricity in 2006 than all the grid-connected solar panels in the world.
Tom also won the annual Inspiring Efficiency leadership award from the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (MEEA). The award honors Tom's long record of success as a businessman and advocate in the field of industrial energy efficiency. MEEA promotes energy efficiency in the Midwest as a means of achieving sustainable economic development and environmental preservation.
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Tackle climate change rapidly — Sean Casten's article in Spark argues that the current climate-change debate is based on a false assumption — that many decades are needed before greenhouse gas pollution can be cut. In fact, history is rife with examples of rapid change in the power sector. Read more.
The New Republic — The annual energy issue touches on how to diversify and improve our power system as we deal with climate change—through decentralization, waste energy recycling and more. Tom Casten’s efforts to lower greenhouse emissions and cut energy costs for manufacturers are cited. Read more.
ACEEE honors Tom Casten — The American Council for an Energy-Efficiency Economy (ACEEE) has selected RED Chairman Tom Casten as a 2009 Champion of Energy Efficiency, calling him “perhaps the most viable and effective advocate for clean distributed energy for the past three decades.” Read more.
Worldwatch Institute — The Worldwatch Institute argues that intercepting waste energy streams “can add a huge boost to the U.S. production of affordable, carbon-free, energy. … Energy recycling from fossil fuel-burning plants can help us make the transition to renewables much sooner.” The article concludes that recycling the energy content of all U.S. smokestack waste could replace about 30 percent of the electricity now produced by burning fossil fuels. Read more.
The New Republic — Sean Casten commends Obama for insisting that efficiency will play a major role in the country’s energy policy. But Sean stresses that the focus should not be on how consumers use power but instead on how energy is generated in the first place. Read more.
Nature Magazine — Nature declares that waste heat from industrial plants and electricity-generating stations represent a huge amount of lost energy. Tom Casten is quoted saying, “Separate generation of electricity and heat is utter madness.” He points out that over a century ago, Thomas Edison built an electric plant in Manhattan which sent its waste heat through pipes to warm nearby buildings. Read more.
Smithsonian — The publication’s on-line edition features an interview with Tom Casten explaining how to capture power that goes up in smoke. According to Tom, “I became convinced in about 1974 or 1975 that global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions is going to be the biggest issue that we’ve ever faced as human beings and that we have to burn less fossil fuel and learn to reduce CO2 emissions profitably.” Read more.