3 out of 3800 compressores use the exhaust heat. That could be described as not that different than gas flaring.   Both would need money invested the will to get value out the wasted energy.

Like the gas flaring going on next to schools in Africa.    

Interesting interview.  

A little short on what can be done to change it.  Where do we go from here.

How is it possible that the U.S. electric industry has not improved delivered efficiency in 47 years? It should not surprise anyone that efficiency would rapidly improve but for many barriers, misplaced incentives,financial guarantees of inefficient approaches, and a system ruled by Politboros. (Rate Commissions) Consequently, answering the question, "Where do we go from here?" is inherently complex.

I will quickly outline broad steps needed to induce profitable clean energy production, and hope other readers can sharpen the details.

Create a national inventory of all presently wasted energy that could be profitably recycled.  Identify the opportunity by town, county, voting district, and industry so the public and our leaders understand the magnitude of the opportunity.
Demand that DOE, EPA, and every Public Utility Commission change their metrics to optimize the delivered cost of each kilowatt-hour, including all capital amortization and losses associated with T&D.  Local generation avoids transmission capital and line losses, but is typically paid, at best, the price paid for power at a remote station.
3)Either stop providing rate payer guarantees of central generation plants, new transmission wires and new distribution system investments, or provide the ratepayer guarantees to local generation as well.  For the last 100 years, when a rate commission or FERC agreed that a central generation investment and/or associated wires was prudent, the lifetime return on that investment was effectively guaranteed, providing cheap capital to the least efficient approach .
Pass a federal law voiding all state prohibitions against private electric wires that cross public streets. (note that there are no prohibitions against private natural gas pipes.)  This will enable local generators to sell electricity to neighbors at retail minus the true cost of delivering the power.  Expect few new wires, as distribution utilities price distribution down to the avoided cost of new wires.
Replace the EPA's input-based site-specific, technology-specific, time of permit-specific pollution allowance approach with pollutant allowances per unit of useful delivered energy that apply to all generators, all fuels, all technology, all age plants, and let market forces determine the optimal way to reduce emmissions, including using efficiency as a pollution control measure.
Ask the independent power industry to identify every regulatory or legal barrier to local generation and then ask the relevant legislature/regulatory body to determine if there is a remaining societal objective to the rule (many of these barriers are in laws passed in the early 1900s), and if yes, is there a way to meet the societal objective without blocking local generation.  (Example: Operator laws passed 80 years ago mandate continuous monitoring of any facility producing roughly 150 psig steam but all states allow companies to compress natural gas to 1600 psig without operator attendance, because automatic safety equipment was available by the time anyone started compressing gas for pipeline transport.)
Cause the EPA to determine the health and environmental costs to society of each form of air pollution and pass taxes on all pollution sufficient to recover the health and environmental costs, thus enabling market forces to internalize true pollutant costs and make optimal decisions.
Remove the throughput bias from all monopoly electric system rate regulation so as to decouple utility returns on invested capital from electric sales through the wires. End the hypocrisy of utlity administered energy efficiency programs.
Set all standby rates for local generation to reflect the costs the utility would have, statistically determined to provide standby, less the savings to the grid caused by new local generation in avoided wires, line losses and central generation investment costs.  All such calculations suggest a net payment to local generators versus the ubiquitous practice of charging inflated utility cost estimates with no offsetting benefit recognition.

These nine actions would trigger a twenty year replacement of the present deeply suboptimal system of heat and power generation with a system of local generation that recycles waste energy and interconnects to provide reliable electricity.  We estimate this would induce a capital investment in the U.S. of roughly $350 billion, reduce fossil fuel use for electric generation by 50%, cut US CO2 emissions by 20% overall, and cut real electric rates by 40%.  A byproduct benefit would be the 40% drop in criteria pollutant emissions.

As a matter of interest, Denmark embarked on similar objectives in the mid-1980's and has over 50% local generation today, plus uses only 40% as much input energy per unit of gross domestic product as is used by the U.S. and Canada.

For starters, that is where do we go from here.

Tom Casten

Tom Casten, Chair, Recycled Energy Development LLC