Combined Heat & Power: Recycling Energy

摘要

Recycling, once confined to rag pickers in poor countries, has gone mainstream. Over the past 30 years, competitive industries have learned to rag pick ― go through the trash and salvage waste steel, aluminum, waste paper and plastic. Recycling presently wasted energy could cut U.S. fossil fuel purchases by $65 billion per year, postpone new electrical transmission and distribution investments, reduce emissions of various pollutants by 19-48 percent, and decrease electric system vulnerability to extreme weather and terrorist actions. A variety of proven technologies lie in wait, but the industry assumption of the superiority of central generation blinds the world to the recycling opportunities from decentralized electric generation (DG).