Re- Co- Suav-ay
Submitted by: rba on Sat, 05/17/2008 - 08:13
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Rendering: Metcalf Energy Center, © Hillier Group (2003)
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There is a company out here on the left coast called Wellons that has been building and installing "co-generation" systems for the timber/lumber industry for forty years. James Fallows covers another type of "new" system in China, while Lisa Margonelli covers the current situation in our beloved flag-pinned USA.
Both are worth the read. Enjoy your Saturday.
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James Fallows/theAtlantic: China's Silver Lining (June '08)
The heart of his idea—easy to describe, tricky to implement—is capturing the enormous amount of heat normally wasted in cement making and using it to run turbines that generate electric power.
Lisa Margonelli/theAtlantic: Waste Not (April '08)
By making use of its “junk energy,” an industrial plant can generate its own power and buy less from the grid. A case in point is the ArcelorMittal steel mill in East Chicago, Indiana, where a company called Primary Energy/EPCOR USA has been building on-site energy plants to capture heat and gases since 1996.
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rba...
Very cool stuff...
Can't ask "who knew?" anymore, because you've educated us!
Nits
Too much of the news coverage on energy has gotten to the point where "old" = "bad", "new" = "good", which translates into massive re-invention, and duplication of effort. (That "exciting new wireless power technology" from the minds @ MIT is based on Tesla's work - more than a century old.)
Also true that some of our best minds are stove-piped into their specific areas of expertise, generally unaware of needs other than those directly in front of them. (Annals of Innovation story in the last New Yorker).
Question is: Why, when we have the technological capability to provide cross-pollination of ideas and inventions on a planetary scale, do we continue to be locked into an arcane, centuries-old system encouraging individual effort at the expense of the entire species?
Patent-ly unfair.
I see it all the time in my own work
the new new (which is really the old new repackaged by the smart marketers) trumps the old and stable every time.
It's cuz money is to be made on the new new (gotta buy it, install it, analyze it) and then when the new new is not as effective or only marginally more effective than the old new or the old old, well, we get to start the cycle again.
Money to be made changing things up, doncha know.