In a world of rising energy prices, a growing demand for clean and sustainable energy and a growing demand to mitigate climate change, should we be constructing new coal power plans or other high green house gas (GHG) emitting power sources?

When I go around industrial complexes and see the huge eye-catching plume of smoke rising up smoke stacks in to the atmosphere, the first thing that comes to my mind, possibly like most of your minds is the air pollution and to an extent climate change causing potential of these waste hot gases.

Nevertheless, these pollution sources can be transformed into a huge energy resource to alleviate our dwindling sources of energy and possibly tackle climate change. Indeed, the heat energy in these waste hot gases rising from smoke stacks could be captured and converted to electricity or use as input in to another process. In essence, this conversion reduces the amount of fossil fuel we burn and doesn’t only provide a clean and sustainable source of energy, but the possibility to purify the content of the emitted smoke, one of the major sources of air pollution and respiratory problems.

The potential for converting the heat content of waste hot gases in to useful energy is limited by awareness, willingness of facilities, capital and government policies. According to Canada’s green house gas (GHG) Inventory for 2006, a total of 350 facilities mandatorily reported GHG emissions, collectively emitting a total of 278 megatonnes of carbon dioxide, over one third (39%) of Canada’s total GHG emissions and also, 43 below threshold facilities voluntarily reported their GHG emissions. These facilities emit huge quantities of waste hot gases and do report their emissions because the Canadian GHG Emissions Reporting program compels companies emitting more than 100.000 tonnes of GHG emissions per year to report.

Notwithstanding, if the GHG Reporting program could incorporate conversion of waste hot gases to energy, even to a limited extent, it will be a potential source of energy. Some estimates put the potential to generate energy from waste hot gases in the US at 15% of US current energy demand and possibly lower for Canada. Since waste hot gas is waste, like any other waste, before using it, every facility should have an interest in reducing this waste or either encouraged or forced to do so by the authorities.

This technology for generating highly needed energy from waste hot gases is not an imagination but a reality, as it is already being provided by some Canadian and US companies with an attractive medium term payback period. With a little push from the government in terms of policies and incentive, and a strong determination from huge combustion facilities in a back-drop of rising energy prices, this source of energy will go a long way to address our growing quest for not just energy but clean and “renewable” energy.

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Tags: climate change, energy, Environment, sustainable energy

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 9:26 am and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.