$135 oil forces industry to embrace efficiency
Monday, June 23rd, 2008My Clean Break column today takes a look at the rising interest in industrial-scale heat recovery technologies as pulp and paper, food and beverage, biofuel and a range of other companies cope with rising fossil fuel prices. Tim Angus, president and CEO of Ottawa-based Thermal Energy, estimates that a third — up to $1 billion — in oil and gas used in industrial boilers and dryers in Ontario is lost in the form of waste heat. He says it’s possible to capture up to 80 per cent of that heat and redirect it to industrial processes. Alternatively, companies such as Ormat Technologies are helping some industries turn that heat into electricity. I posted about Thermal Energy recently, but this column takes a closer look at the opportunity and why interest in heat recovery technologies is, well, heating up.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.