Watching our energy “wasteline”: There’s BTU’s in them thar Smoke stacks!

So we’re eating local food, enjoying your local community, living closer to family and work, walking more, driving electric cars, taking the train and the planet is healing—what about getting places to visit friends and relatives? At $20 a gallon and upward, author Christopher Steiner points out in $20 Per Gallon, our entire relationship to energy will change forever.

Over 90% of all the gold ever mined is still in circulation. Why? Because of the value we assign to it. Nobody throws gold away on purpose. At $20 a gallon, energy—all forms of it—will be the new gold and the gold rush will be on to capture and reuse all of it.

In the heart of West Virginia coal country, Recycled Energy Development (RED) is building systems for capturing waste heat from furnaces in a silicon plant, converting it to steam and making electricity. 50 megawatts worth, enough to power 40,000 American homes. The savings will make the silicon produced at this plant the cheapest in the world, due to the energy savings. A steel mill in Indiana is capturing its 2000 degree exhaust and creating 95 megawatts of electricity. The system cost $165 million to build, but returns $100 million a year in energy savings. Pretty soon you’re talking about real money here.

This is energy that is literally going up the chimney today, but at $20 a gallon, it won’t be anymore. Every chimney and every vent on every plant or home that you see sending out hot air or steam is shedding energy—energy that innovators can capture and reuse.

In the era of cheap oil, the efficiency of our electrical grid has dropped from 65% in 1910 to only 33% today. This is the legacy of cheap energy—waste. It’s like losing 2/3rds of your paycheck on the way to the bank- every week for decades.

Waste energy is the low hanging fruit, as is conservation, saving what my friend Amory Lovins calls “negawatts." The more expensive energy becomes, the cheaper it is not to have to produce it in the first place. Houses, appliances, everything we touch and use—will become radically more efficient.

And the mix of our energy source will change. Hydro and wind are already competitive and growing. Solar will play an ever larger role. We get 13,000 times more sun energy daily coming to earth from that nuclear reactor 8 minutes away—our sun—than the energy demands of the  entire world. We’ll learn how to capture and store it more and more efficiently and cost effectively—like your house plants. We’ll finally become as smart as shrubs. We’ll use geothermal and biomass where it’s available.

One cautionary note—Steiner claims we’ll have to use nuclear to meet both energy demands and climate goals. Some environmentalists agree, arguing that emissions free nuclear is critical to reduce our carbon emissions enough to avoid the worst aspects of global warming. The big issue remains the waste. Whoever comes up with a safe, reliable, environmentally responsible way to transform nuclear waste into resources will be the hero of the ages.

So in our $20 a gallon world, gasoline will be a pricey and seldom used commodity. We’ll fly once a decade if at all; taking the high speed train to places we use to fly. 2/3rds of us won’t even own a car, because we won’t need the hassle. Our food will come from local farms grown near where we live and work. We’ll be gardening on our roofs in urban neighborhoods, using plant plastics and other natural materials that replace petroleum, recycle everything, even waste heat, and chances are, have a great job in the renewable energy or waste to resources sector. The air will be clean, the water too, and the planet will on an upswing. All driven by one simple metric. Dollars per gallon. Turns out that in the long run, cheap energy was our worst enemy and expensive gasoline our best friend.

$20 a Gallon, Part 8: $18 Gas – A Renaisance of Rail!
$20 a Gallon, Part 7: $16 Gas – Local Food Rises Again!
$20 a Gallon, Part 6: $12 Gas – Bye ‘Burbs, Hello City Life!
$20 a Gallon, Part 5: $14 Gas —Small Town Renaissance
$20 a Gallon, Part 4: $10 Gas — Drive Small and Clean
$20 a Gallon, Part 3: $8 Gas Clears the Friendly Skies!
$20 a Gallon, Part 2: $6 Gas Kills SUVs dead!
How Rising Gas Prices will Spur Waste into Resources