Congrats Sean.

grist.org

Congratulations.  It's great that you're getting the financial support to move forward with your ideas.

Having said that, I wanted to question whether or not including waste heat recovery in an RPS would really be good policy. On one hand, it's a readily-tapped source of carbon-free energy, and that's all to the good.  On the other hand, from the things you have said elsewhere, my understanding is that the barriers to widescale adoption are not financial so much as regulatory.  That is to say (and correct me if I'm wrong) these projects will tend to pencil out as being profitable, except that various utility regulations either increase the cost artificially (e.g. departing load fees) or effective prohibit the project from happening at all.  In the meantime, these opportunities presuppose the existing wasteful use of fossil fuels, with all the externalities that implies.

Renewable energy, on the other hand, often doesn't pencil out under the existing economic paradigm, but does not impose alot of externalities.  The difficulty making the economic case arises in large part because the costs of the externalities of competing power sources are not being counted, so the fact that solar, wind, etc do not have them (at least to the same extent) does not work in their favor.

From this perspective, it seems to me that the best policy prescription would be an RPS that only counts truly renewable power sources, coupled with a liberalization of utility regulations to remove the barriers waste heat recovery and generation.

Thoughts?

GreenE -- renewables do pencil out when done right.  Efficiency is more important than new sources, and more cost effective.  RPS is very narrow.  Smart carbon displacement should include all energy applications, not just electricity.

and good luck Sean!

As I've said before, while debating some of your details, these can be very worthwhile projects.

One question if you have the time to answer - I can understand that governments might be wary of including your projects in RPS definitions, but I would think you would be in a good position under "cap and trade" (or carbon tax) carbon emissions legislation which treats everything pretty uniformly. Any opinions on that?

The devil is in the details.  A carbon regime that is market-wide and applies a consistent price on all tons is wonderful for our business.  But most of the debate around cap & trade is unfortunately framed as if this isn't possible.  The allocation vs. auction debate is after all a debate about whether or not certain tons should be free (most commonly, those from coal).  RGGI decided that chose only to cover power plants >25 MW, leaving the rest of the market (including the half that recovers heat from those power plants) unaffected, potentially creating some counter-productive incentives.

So - hope springs eternal, but watch the details.

And thanks!

At least Sean is doing something about the issue.  I'm trying to work with global shipping too.  We need more people that can show you how to save money and reduce GHG as well (not to mention getting paid for it). Good business model. Go get 'em. -sam

Onward through the fog

Sean, this is a comment related to your RPS blog as well as this one - a roundabout way to influence RPS, but a thought....

What drives politicians and hence legislation is public feelings - they do the things that large number of people like. Solar has caught up in recent years because global warming is so visible and people see installing solar as a way to do their part. The solar panels on the houses advertise for the technology themselves and solar gets a lot of press.

Similarly do you think it would be a good idea to push a 5KW CHP for houses which might be subsidized by the government and would drive home the point of heat-first design and the energy savings thereof.  

This would drive the point that electricity is a byproduct of the `CHP furnace' and we do not need to buy it from the utility. This would get a lot of press and popularity thereby driving the legislation for waste heat and pressure reducing power generation which could truly have an impact on our overall energy consumption.

    Good luck Sean, great news!!  Good to hear about practical environmentalism.  Wishing you the best!! (and consider expanding to developing nations!!).

patrick in Beijing