In the face of an increasingly industrialized world and a world facing unknown threats from climate change the importance of driving up energy efficiency across sectors becomes crystal clear. Fortunately, industries have already begun to tap into new ideas for drawing down their energy demands and emissions. By Kevin Klustner, GreenBiz

[This essay is an excerpt adapted from Kevin Klustner's upcoming book Energy Efficiency The Future is Now, which will be released in October.]

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The petrochemical industry is by far the most energy-intensive industry in the world, and one of the least promising when it comes to energy efficiency. This is because of the direct and precise relationships between feedstock inputs and outputs produced. The ratios cannot technically change, for example, when a ton of ammonia is being produced. Indeed, .41 ton of natural gas is always required in the chemical reactions needed to make one ton of ammonia, so energy efficiency measures are capped from the start.

Energy efficiency efforts are more likely to be rewarded in the steel industry, however, because of process optimization, which can reduce energy losses. Developing nations can also build mills as energy efficient as those in the developed world. The China Iron and Steel Association, for example, says that all new steel mills now under construction in China will meet global energy efficiency standards.

I feel optimism about the refining industry, too. An energy audit performed by the U.S. Department of Energy on one key refinery showed room for a 12% energy-intensity improvement with a payback time of two years or less. If we could recover flare gas, which could be used for energy but is generally burned and lost, the refining sector could achieve a global average of 30% to 40% in energy productivity improvement.

New Energy Efficiency Technologies on the Horizon

In addition to biomass-based cogeneration, new energy efficiency technologies for the industrial sector await.

Ironically, the chemical industry, which is a bit hamstrung when it comes to its own energy efficiency efforts, is exploring ways to offer lower emissions to its customers. For example, new after-cleaning products for the textile industry can reduce energy consumption by 60% and water usage by 40%. And suppliers of auto coatings have developed new products that eliminate a round of primer application. The result: reductions in energy, solvents and emissions for each car coated. The chemical industry is also researching nanoporous foam materials for better heat insulation and nanocubes that store hydrogen for new and cleaner auto engines.

In another emerging energy-efficiency development, energy companies and industrial gas companies are working together on gas-to-liquid technology (GTL). This process turns gas, coal or biomass at the source into liquid fuel by blending it with pure oxygen under heat and pressure to produce synthesis gas, which, in turn, gets transformed into diesel-like fuel molecules.

Industrial gas companies are also working to perfect carbon capture and storage technology (CCS). Carbon capture is the process of removing carbon emissions from the exhaust gases of power stations and other large-scale emitters. The current research focuses on a pure oxygen combustion process that helps recover CO2 emitted from boilers fired by coal and by heavy petroleum residues; chemical companies are investigating solvent recovery of CO2. Once recovered, carbon dioxide can either be recycled into industrial processes or stored. If proved effective and this is a big "if" because CCS is problematic and may present environmental and legal concerns carbon capture and storage could help reduce emissions from the slew of new coal-fired power stations planned over the next decades, especially in China and India.

Finally, the role of biotechnology in helping the industrial sector become more energy efficient must not be discounted. Biotech companies are presently researching how enzymes rather than metal catalysts can help produce industrial products.

For now, though, we must look to sprawling industrial conglomerates like General Electric for green hope. One of the biggest recent corporate converts to eco-responsibility, GE is committed to doubling the level of its clean tech research and development budget to $1.5 billion a year and doubling the sales of these technologies to $20 billion, both by 2010. The automaker also wants to cut the absolute greenhouse gas emissions from its own manufacturing operations by 1% by 2012 and reduce the relative intensity of its own greenhouse gas emissions by 3% by 2008.

If the industrial sector were to gain inspiration and insight from GE's forward-looking example, the energy efficiency movement would gain much-needed momentum in factories and plants around the world.

 

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Kevin Klustner is CEO of Seattle-based Verdiem, which distributes energy-efficiency software to public- and private-sector entities.

NOTE: This excerpt was originally published by GreenBiz.