Greening The Beer
Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland is taking great strides in lowering the their impact on Mother Earth.
Now the have installed a heat exchanger to their exhaust pipe to chill their beer. It could also produce electricity but Ohio's laws prevent them from doing this. Cogeneration, the use of waste heat to generate electricity, could meet 7% of US's electric needs.
Do not stand in the way of power company's profits or you will get trampled. They used to be public utilities, but the republicans deregulated them for better profits.
Via Grist Mill.
They've already tried vermicomposting (feeding kitchen scraps to worms to make fertilizer), run beer delivery trucks on used vegetable oil and fanned cold winter air into beer chillers. But to Patrick it's all been low-hanging fruit. A few dollars saved here, a little less carbon emissions and trash there. The biggest challenge has been the manufacture of beer, an energy-intensive production process.
Now the have installed a heat exchanger to their exhaust pipe to chill their beer. It could also produce electricity but Ohio's laws prevent them from doing this. Cogeneration, the use of waste heat to generate electricity, could meet 7% of US's electric needs.
Pustai estimates that through cooling alone, 750,000 kilowatts less electricity will be used in one year, a 20 percent reduction in energy consumption. That will equal savings between $65,000 and $75,000. If Great Lakes and ReXorce could turn on the device's electricity production feature as well, those numbers could more than double. For the time being, however, Ohio's regulations and Cleveland Public Power's archaic rate structures (CPP is Great Lakes' electricity provider) prevent recycled energy advocates and entrepreneurs from reaping waste-heat recovery's total benefits. "At Great Lakes, our unit will be able to produce electricity, but won't," says Philip Brennan, the chief operating officer at ReXorce. That's because Ohio law allows only licensed utilities to produce and sell electricity. Anyone else faces regulatory oversight.
Do not stand in the way of power company's profits or you will get trampled. They used to be public utilities, but the republicans deregulated them for better profits.
Via Grist Mill.
1 comment:
This article actually understates the potential of cogeneration. I'm associated with Recycled Energy Development, a company that turns manufacturers' waste heat into clean power and steam -- exactly the kind of stuff discussed in the Cleveland Scene. Our nation could actually get 40% of its electricity needs from "recycling" energy at industrial facilities. What I believe the reporter was referring to was that we could slash greenhouse emissions by 7% just by doing "waste heat recovery" (a form of cogeneration) for manufacturers. Cogeneration overall at manufacturing plants could slash these emissions by 20%. That's just a massive number -- as much as if we took every passenger vehicle off the road. Meanwhile, we'd SAVE money on energy. But yes, regulations are getting in the way. And that's what we need to fix.
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