This looks serious — here’s a financing bulletin from Cleantech
Boston’s Denham Capital Management formed a strategic partnership with Westmont, Ill.-based Recycled Energy Development to develop a $1.5 billion portfolio of waste energy recycling programs. The platform will fund projects developed and managed by Recycled Energy. Denham’s initial commitment is $500 million.
Recycled Energy Development also received a favorable writeup in The Atlantic. Excerpt:
A 2005 report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that U.S. industry could profitably recycle enough waste energy—including steam, furnace gases, heat, and pressure—to reduce the country’s fossil-fuel use (and greenhouse-gas emissions) by nearly a fifth. A 2007 study by the Mc Kinsey Global Institute sounded largely the same note; it concluded that domestic industry could use 19 percent less energy than it does today—and make more money as a result.
…Casten wants to help everyone see such possibilities, so he’s been combining EPA emissions figures with Google Earth images to let investors “peer” into smokestacks and visualize the wasted energy. Recycled Energy Development recently received $1.5 billion in venture funding, which should enable it to expand its reach greatly. Casten gives a whirlwind tour of the targets: natural-gas pipelines, he says, use nearly a tenth of the gas they carry to keep the fuel flowing. Capture some of the heat and pressure they lose, and the U.S. could take four coal-fired power plants offline (out of roughly 300). Another power plant could be switched off if energy were collected at the country’s 27 carbon-black plants, which make particles used in the manufacture of tires…
Thanks for posting on this. I’m associated with Recycled Energy Development (recycled-energy.com), the potential here is absolutely immense. About 69% of our nation’s greenhouse emissions come from the production of power and heat; 19% come from cars and light trucks. So the real action is in generating power more efficiently. As you mention above, widespread energy recycling could reduce global warming pollution by 20%. That’s slightly more than if we took every single car off the road. The only catch is that we won’t reach that level unless we reform some of our regulations, which give monopoly protections to utilities and make it hard for efficient alternatives to compete.
Thanks for your comments. The more we investigate the paths to effective economic solutions, the more we discover regulatory barriers. And, as you point out, these regulations are often a consequence of rent-seeking interests.
I would appreciate any references you can offer on the regulations that are impeding the efforts of Recycled Energy Development.
I agree this is a much underutilized “resource.” The other point (perhaps addressed in the Atlantic article - I’ll read it) is that this could take some of the pressure off the need to increase generating capacity. Utilities are already having a hard time keeping up with the growth in demand.
This is one of the “no-regrets” steps in addressing the global-warming risk. Things that it will have made sense to do even if global warming turns out not as great as risk as it appears to be now.
This is one of the “no-regrets” steps…
Indeed. Recycled Energy Development appears to be finding fast-payback waste opportunities that work in the context of 2006 oil prices, i.e., no add-on carbon price signal. Very definitely no-regrets, and shareholders should be happy even if we are back to $50/bbl oil in the next decade.
Roger Pielke is pessimistic about passing any useful carbon price signal. I wrote him a note a few days ago encouraging him to look at the Nordhaus 2007 study “The Challenge of Global Warming: Economic Models and Environmental Policy” [PDF]. This is the most complete, up-to-date examination (I know of) of the relationship between estimated consequences and carbon pricing policy options. The political process may take no notice, but I find it very encouraging as to the possibility of impacting GHG concentrations without significantly reducing the wealth of the future generations. Nordhaus’s team finds the optimum carbon price policy starts quite low, progressing at a 2 to 3% compounded real rate of increase. I’m guessing e.g. 2x more wealth/capita in 2100 Bangladesh is one of the most important assets for effective management of impacts.
I thought Pielke’s post it was really excellent. What did you think? I’ve not written anything on it yet, still thinking about it.
Steve, just got back to this post to see if anyone else had commented. You asked for examples on regulations impeding the efforts of RED and energy recycling. We have a few examples here, toward the end of our backgrounder: http://recycled-energy.com/_documents/media-kit/backgrounder.pdf
One major example is that every state makes it a felony for a non-utility to run a private electric wire across a public street. Private phone companies have done this for decades, but not independent power producers. That means companies that use RED can’t sell any excess power and heat to neighboring buildings, thereby suppressing demand for recycled energy.
Another example of a regulation that inhibits efficiency is actually the Clean Air Act, which includes a grandfather clause that allows old, dirty power plants to stay in business forever. If these plants make any investment at all in efficiency, they are legally obligated to go all the way and use the top-of-the-line technology throughout the plant; otherwise, their operating permits will be voided. The result is that these plants simply make no efficiency improvements at all, and haven’t since the Clean Air Act passed.