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The Air We Breathe: The Energy We ‘Make’

Article for the Hudson Valley Business Journal, Second in a Series of Environmentally Oriented Articles

Our tremendous ability over the last half century to create and transmit electricity using heavy coal and petroleum burning has contributed greatly to the inherent problem we now experience … and breathe. We’re starting to chart our nations’ course to use less of these fuels, but such cultural adaptation doesn’t happen overnight. Several atmospheric pollutants dictate our attention to their control.


By: Sander Bonvell, Partner and Director of Environmental Sciences
Air Resources Group, LLC

Our tremendous ability over the last half century to create and transmit electricity using heavy coal and petroleum burning has contributed greatly to the inherent problem we now experience … and breathe. We’re starting to chart our nations’ course to use less of these fuels, but such cultural adaptation doesn’t happen overnight. Several atmospheric pollutants dictate our attention to their control. Besides very fine particulates which my last article discussed, there are other National Ambient Air Quality (NAAQ) parameters by which we judge our air quality that give us our acid rain, ozone, haze and other particular environmental challenges.

While not the only contributor to this problem, a large and impactful source of these pollutants has been our model of large-scale electricity generation: the “Utility” or “Grid” that generates enormous boiler, turbine and engine combustion emissions from environmentally-challenging amounts of coal, oil and gas. As we struggle with fossil fuel downsizing there is an alternative - and an attitude – that many large institutions (hospitals, universities) and commercial and industrial facilities can adapt: use more efficient means to generate electricity and remove yourself from the Grid. Combined heat and power, CHP, a specific form of distributed generation, refers to strategic placement of electric power generating units at or near customer facilities to supply on-site energy needs. This cogeneration of producing energy and capturing and re-using the heat is a quantum leap beyond the wasteful heat loss of classic separate heat and power (SHP) Grid electricity production. Imagine the immensity of this loss if just a tiny microcosm of that wasted heat can be experienced by the touch of a hot light bulb we shouldn’t have touched, or those red wires in the toaster, or a car’s exhaust pipe. The behemoth Grid accommodates our gluttonous energy demands, but does little to quell its own pollution, is still subject to grid congestion and transmission bottlenecking, and doesn’t accommodate itself to the more efficient and less monstrous contemporary power generating controls.

Large groups of old boilers and engines out in the business and industrial communities are at, or nearing end of life, are not cost-beneficial for add-on controls, and/or no longer satisfactorily meet energy demands. These facilities who know they must do something should consider an audit to determine their future and current energy needs, and build in controls for more efficient capture and reuse of thermal energy.

There is great advantage of CHP over conventional central station power generation and on-site boilers. CHP typically requires only three-fourths of the primary energy that SHP requires. This reduced primary fuel consumption is critical to the environmental benefits of CHP, since burning the same fuel more efficiently means fewer emissions for the same level of output. Figure 1 shows a general 49% efficiency for SHP, dwarfed by CHP’s 75% efficiency.

This author is integrally involved in an 11-megawatt power plant repowering project in permitting, compliance, technology and emissions issues for the replacement of old reciprocating engines and boilers, with state-of-the-art turbines and heat regenerating steam generators (HRSG). Electricity production of the new plant is tripled, and hot water is more efficiently heated. Relative to the equivalent pollutant emissions that the local Grid would produce by having to supply this customer alone, the project offers 40% reduction in greenhouse gases (as carbon dioxide), and 79% reduction in regulated NAAQ parameters. These are phenomenal environmental and health improvements for the community, as well as economic and energy savings for the power plant.

CHP offers numerous and wide-spread benefits to various industries and opportunities:

Industrial manufacturers – chemical, refining, ethanol, pulp and paper, food processing, glass manufacturing
Institutions – colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, military bases
Commercial buildings – hotels and casinos, airports, high-tech campuses, large office buildings, nursing homes
Municipal – district energy systems, waste water treatment facilities, landfills, K-12 schools
Residential – multi-family housing, planned communities

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) supports combined heat and power because of significant cost-effective emissions reductions achieved by increasing efficient energy supply. The average low efficiency of fossil-fueled power plants in the U.S. has remained virtually unchanged for 40 years: two-thirds of the energy in the fuel is lost - vented as heat - at most power plants in the United States . This improvement in CHP efficiency is an excellent pollution prevention strategy. Furthermore, CHP will likely reduce electric transmission and distribution losses resulting in further efficiency gains.

The EPA created a CHP Partnership with over 200 members, including private organizations such as energy users, energy service companies, CHP project developers and consultants, equipment manufacturers, and others, as well as federal, state, and local government agencies. EPA is specifically undertaking targeted efforts to increase CHP use in three market sectors: the Partnership has been working with the ethanol industry since 2003, and in 2005, began strategic market development within the hotels and casinos markets, as well as wastewater treatment facilities.

If your energy requirements and your timing qualify you for CHP, ARG can review your system and work with you to determine the feasibility of moving forward with this great energy saving concept.