In rush toward renewable energy, cheaper options ignored: CEO

New York (Platts)--27Oct2005

While renewable energy is gaining great attention in the electric power
industry, some cheaper and readily available clean technologies are being
ignored, Thomas Casten, CEO of Primary Energy, said Thursday at a UN-sponsored
conference in New York.

     "We are over-focused on renewable energy," Casten said in remarks to the
Sustainable Energy Financing Initiative Roundtable. "We need to pick the
low-hanging fruit." 

     Casten said his company built a project near Chicago that captures waste
heat from coking facilities and generates 90 MW while producing steam for
industrial customers. 

     That plant creates more clean energy than all the solar collectors in the
world, Casten said. While the amount of installed solar capacity across the
globe is 650 MW, solar facilities operate at an average capacity factor of 8%,
Casten said, adding that his plants are available 96% of the time. "The goal
should not be renewable energy, but clean energy," he said.

     Casten told the conference that the "single-cycle paradigm" of energy use
was obsolete by 1960, but most energy is still used that way, including in
power generation, and does not attempt to recover waste energy.

     Clean energy is "just as environmentally beneficial as renewable energy
and ought to be treated that way," Casten said.

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