Senator Jeff Bingaman introduced the Clean Energy Standard (CES) Act that highlights the economic and environmental benefits of efficient combined heat and power (CHP) and clean waste energy recovery (WER). The chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee claimed his framework “lets the market and American ingenuity determine the best path forward.”

The CES legislation would require the nation’s largest utilities to generate a rising percentage of their electricity from clean energy resources, including solar, wind, nuclear power, biomass, and natural gas.

There’s something a little stirring about the president of the United States praising your efforts. It’s particularly heartwarming when he does it before a national audience and a gathering of all the key federal policymakers. So there were understandable cheers among clean energy advocates when President Obama embraced industrial energy efficiency in his State of the Union Address.

More than 200 companies signed a full-page advertisement declaring industrial energy efficiency will put a million Americans to work. The ad, coordinated by The Pew Charitable Trusts, explains that U.S. utilities and factories send enough heat up their chimneys to power all of Japan. But with existing, proven technologies, we can harness that wasted energy, dramatically cut electricity costs, and make our manufacturers more competitive.

In this politically partisan era, it’s refreshing to see the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative Hoover Institution agree on something.  That something, in the wonky words of such policy reports is distributed power systems (DPS) have “the potential to make a significant positive contribution to the U.S. power system.” The report pays particular attention to combined heat and power, lamenting that CHP is “homeless”.

Probably the biggest barrier to clean energy development is the lack of markets. Utility monopolies traditionally blocked independent generators from competing with their own power plants, even if the utilities’ facilities were more expensive and polluting. Congress tackled this problem in 1978 with the passage of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) and many states responded with policies that launched aggressive growth of renewables and cogeneration. The concept was simple – clean energy projects should be able to compete with traditional generators and receive power purchase contracts equal to what a utility would pay to generate and deliver its own electricity.

A recent study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory finds efficiency, particularly combined heat and power (CHP), would make U.S. industry become more competitive as it also cuts manufacturers’ energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. “The U.S. industrial sector,” state the researchers, “presents a large and significant opportunity to promote a clean energy economy.”

The Alliance for Industrial Efficiency recently submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on its “Boiler MACT,” a set of rules to reduce hazardous air pollutants from the nation’s industrial boilers. (MACT stands for the “maximum available control technology” standards that must be met by these boilers.) The Alliance views the rules as an important means to enhance industrial efficiency, especially through the use of waste heat recovery (WHR) and combined heat and power (CHP) projects.

RED and the Alliance for Industrial Efficiency have submitted comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on how CHP and waste heat recovery (WHR) projects should be compensated for the reliability and stabilization benefits they provide to the electric grid.

The Creating Climate Wealth Summit—to be held in Washington, D.C. on May 3 and 4—will feature a track on distributed generation. The Carbon War Room, the conference’s organizer, says, “With new power plant regulations set to retire 20 percent of all coal capacity in the USA and transmission projects still facing stiff barriers, it looks like distributed generation is the way to go.”

Bloomberg Government, a new media outlet focused on the business implications of government, recently profiled the remarkable economic and environmental benefits of waste heat recovery and other energy recycling techniques. The article also covers the efforts of members of the Alliance for Industrial Efficiency — including RED, GE, Dow Chemical, Sierra Club, and others—to ensure this clean energy solution gets the recognition it deserves in Washington.

December was a great month for those of us who get excited when energy recycling gets the attention it deserves. First, Congress passed the bipartisan tax bill, and it included the extension of the Treasury Grant Program for combined heat and power (CHP). Then, McClatchy Newspapers ran an outstanding article on the economic and environmental benefits of energy recycling.

Too often, the business community and the Environmental Protection Agency seem to be at odds. But recently, the EPA has earned praise from a variety of business groups for recognizing energy recycling as a good way to cut greenhouse emissions.

EPA’s recently issued guidance for greenhouse gas emissions permits makes energy efficiency the centerpiece of its compliance options. It recognizes combined heat and power (CHP) and waste heat recovery as Best Available Control Technologies (BACT), which will allow industrial plants to employ energy recycling techniques as a way to satisfy EPA’s permitting requirements.

Word is getting out that energy recycling is key to revitalizing American manufacturing. Just look at this new op-ed in Crain’s Cleveland Business by prominent Ohio businessman Lonnie Coleman.

Coleman explains that energy efficiency is critical to lowering manufacturing costs and strengthening our industrial sector. He explains how all that heat you see coming out of the smokestacks at industrial facilities is really wasted energy that can be recycled into useful electricity.

Toronto Star columnist Tyler Hamilton does a great job of explaining energy recycling. He writes about how he teaches schoolchildren about energy by putting a steaming cup of coffee under a windmill-like device. The steam from the coffee moves the device — a form of a Stirling engine — and it gains speed and momentum, powered only by the heat rising from the cup. The demonstration shows how heat can be harnessed and put to work.

He goes on to write that while we can’t power the world with coffee, “clearly we don’t give enough consideration to the problem of waste heat.”

A growing coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups has rallied together to support investment tax credits for combined heat and power and energy recycling projects. The Alliance for Industrial Efficiency sent letters to the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee, urging them to include an industrial energy efficiency provision in their final tax packages.

Since I last wrote about this effort, the coalition has grown to 122, and now includes such new notables as the United Steelworkers, The Pew Environment Group and ArcelorMittal.

Why are organizations with such varied interests uniting on this issue? Because energy recycling dramatically improves industrial energy efficiency, and therefore increases manufacturing competitiveness and creates jobs — all while reducing pollution.

…policy wonks, news junkies, energy experts, students, and, well, everybody.

RED has launched a completely redesigned newsroom that we hope will serve as a hub for all the news that’s fit to print on energy recycling.

With everything from brainy policy papers to short videos to news features from prominent media outlets, it’s the place to go for anyone interested in recycled energy and cogeneration.

On a warm summer night in Chicago, thousands gathered in Millennium Park to watch the new documentary Carbon Nation. Recycled Energy Development’s own Sean Casten is featured in the film discussing energy recycling as a profitable way to mitigate climate change. “I don’t know of any bigger opportunity to make more money reducing more C02 than this one. So, if you don’t give a damn about the environment, do it because you’re a greedy bastard and just want cheap power,” says Casten.

We hope you’ll be hearing a lot more about energy recycling now that several companies in the field have teamed up to launch a new initiative called Heat is Power. The goal is to educate lawmakers and the public about the enormous potential of the type of energy recycling known as waste heat recovery—or as they put it, “WH2E” (waste heat to electricity)—to help solve our energy woes and put America back to work.

The Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA) just released the results of a comprehensive study on how to improve industrial energy efficiency. It makes an important point: it pays to invest in recycled energy.

Conducted by Keybridge Research and the University of Maryland’s Inforum Modeling Project, the study looked at IECA’s Sustainable Manufacturing & Growth Initiative policy recommendations, which include investment tax credits for combined heat and power (CHP) and recycled energy, a Clean Energy Standard Offer Program (CESOP) and other proposals. The researchers found that implementing IECA’s recommendations would dramatically improve American manufacturing competitiveness.

How many times have we heard that “clean coal” is the answer to our energy worries? It’s as if all you have to do is rinse off the coal before you burn it and — presto! — you get clean, cheap energy.

The truth is, coal’s only cheap if it’s dirty. RED’s Sean Casten has a column on this subject in Grist.