Public/Private Sector Cooperation to Promote Industrial Energy Efficiency: Allied Partners and the US Department of Energy

Since 1996, the US Department of Energy's Office of Industrial Technologies (USDOE) has been involved in a unique voluntary collaboration with industry called the Allied Partner program. Initially developed under the Motor Challenge program, the partnership concept continues as a central element of USDOE's BestPractices, which in 2001 integrated all of USDOE's near-term industrial program offerings including those in motors, compressed air, pump, fan, process heating and steam systems. Partnerships are sought with end use industrial companies as well as equipment suppliers and manufacturers, utilities, consultants, and state agencies that have extensive existing relationships with industrial customers. Partners are neither paid nor charged a fee for participation. Since the inception of Allied Partners, the assumption has been that these relationships could serve as the foundation for conveying a system energy-efficiency message to many more industrial facilities than could be reached through a typical government-to-end-user program model. An independent evaluation of the Motor Challenge program, reported at the last EEMODS conference, attributed US $16.9 million or nearly 67 percent of the total annual program energy savings to the efforts of Allied Partners in the first three years of operation. A recent evaluation of the Compressed Air Challenger, which grew out of the former Motor Challenger program, attribute additional energy savings from compressed air training alone at US$12.1 million per year. Since the reorganization under BestPractices, the Allied Partner program has been reshaped to extend the impact of all BestPractices program activities. This new model is more ambitious than the former Motor Challenge program concerning the level of collaborative activities negotiated with Allied Partners. This paper describes in detail two new types of program initiatives involving Allied Partners: Qualified Specialist Training and Energy Events. The Qualified Specialist activity was conceived as a way of engaging the supply side of industry, consultants, and utilities to greatly increase use of decision making software developed by USDOE to assist industrial facilities in assessing the energy efficiency of their energy-using systems. To date, USDOE has launched Qualified Specialist training with member companies of the Hydraulic Institute (HI) and with distributors and consultants associated with the Compressed Air Challenge. These activities train and qualify industry professionals to use and to train customers to use USDOE's Pumping System Assessment Tool (PSAT) and AIRMaster + software programs, respectively. The industry experts provide a public benefit by greatly increasing customer access to the software and assessment techniques. Participating Specialists anticipate a business benefit by providing a valuable service to key customers that is associated with USDOE. The Energy Event concept was developed in 2001 in cooperation with the California Energy Commission in response to the state's energy crisis and has been extended to other geographic areas during 2002. The three California events, named ''Energy Solutions for California Industry,'' relied on Allied Partners to provide system-based solutions to industrial companies as both speakers and exhibitors. These one-day events developed a model for a serious solutions-oriented format that avoids the typical trade show atmosphere through strict exhibitor guidelines, careful screening of speaker topics, and reliance on case studies to illustrate cost- and energy-saving opportunities from applying a systems approach. Future plans to use this activity model are discussed as well as lessons learned from the California series

Assessing the economics of large Energy Storage Plants with an optimisation methodology

Power plants, such as wind farms, that harvest renewable energy are increasing their share of the energy portfolio in several countries, including the United Kingdom. Their inability to match demand power profiles is stimulating an increasing need for large ESP (Energy Storage Plants), capable of balancing their instability and shifting power produced during low demand to peak periods. This paper presents and applies an innovative methodology to assess the economics of ESP utilising UK electricity price data, resulting in three key findings. Firstly the paper provides a methodology to assess the trade-off “reserve capacity vs. profitability” and the possibility of establishing the “optimum size capacity”. The optimal reserve size capacity maximizing the NPV (Net Present Value) is smaller than the optimum size capacity minimizing the subsidies. This is not an optimal result since it complicates the incentive scheme to align investors and policy makers' interests. Secondly, without subsidies, none of the existing ESP technologies are economically sustainable. However, subsidies are a relatively small percentage of the average price of electricity in UK. Thirdly, the possibility of operating ESP as both as a reserve and do price arbitrage was identified as a mean of decreasing subsidies for the ESP technologies

Chronic Beryllium Disease and Sensitization at a Beryllium Processing Facility

We conducted a medical screening for beryllium disease of 577 former workers from a beryllium processing facility. The screening included a medical and work history questionnaire, a chest radiograph, and blood lymphocyte proliferation testing for beryllium. A task exposure and a job exposure matrix were constructed to examine the association between exposure to beryllium and the development of beryllium disease. More than 90% of the cohort completed the questionnaire, and 74% completed the blood and radiograph component of the screening. Forty-four (7.6%) individuals had definite or probable chronic beryllium disease (CBD), and another 40 (7.0%) were sensitized to beryllium. The prevalence of CBD and sensitization in our cohort was greater than the prevalence reported in studies of other beryllium-exposed cohorts. Various exposure measures evaluated included duration; first decade worked; last decade worked; cumulative, mean, and highest job; and highest task exposure to beryllium (to both soluble and nonsoluble forms). Soluble cumulative and mean exposure levels were lower in individuals with CBD. Sensitized individuals had shorter duration of exposure, began work later, last worked longer ago, and had lower cumulative and peak exposures and lower nonsoluble cumulative and mean exposures. A possible explanation for the exposure–response findings of our study may be an interaction between genetic predisposition and a decreased permanence of soluble beryllium in the body. Both CBD and sensitization occurred in former workers whose mean daily working lifetime average exposures were lower than the current allowable Occupational Safety and Health Administration workplace air level of 2 μg/m(3) and the Department of Energy guideline of 0.2 μg/m(3)

Performance assessment of thermal bridge elements into a full scale experimental study of a building façade

In this paper, an experimental and numerical approach to the characterization of thermal bridges is presented. The need for this characterization was found within an experimental study in a 2 floor high facade. This facade was constructed with 3 concrete elements which were placed in it to produce a similar thermal bridge effect to the one created by floor slabs traditional building construction in Spain. Commonly applied thermal assessments perform one-dimensional heat transfer analysis over planar elements such as the facades studied in this experiment. However, it is well known that thermal bridges are locations in buildings where one-dimensional heat transfer analysis cannot be applied. This problem was approached by creating a numerical 2D thermal model which was calibrated against experimental data from several temperature and heat flux sensors which were located at specific points in the thermal bridge elements.Government of the Basque Countr

Silicon oxycarbide glass for the immobilisation of irradiated graphite waste

© 2015 Elsevier B.V. Silicon oxycarbide glass has been investigated as a potential immobilisation medium for irradiated graphite waste from nuclear power generation. The glass was synthesised via sol-gel techniques using alkoxysilane precursors. Attempts to produce a wasteform via conventional sintering were unsuccessful, but dense wasteforms were achieved by spark plasma sintering (SPS). Microstructural investigations showed that the addition of graphite to the glass did not alter the structure of the matrix; no reaction between the graphite and the glass matrix was observed. Silicon oxycarbide glass is a viable candidate for encapsulation of graphite waste prior to disposal

The taxation of UK oil and gas production: why the windfalls got away

Starting with evidence that United Kingdom Continental Shelf oil and gas companies have benefitted very disproportionately from the recent period of extraordinarily high oil prices, this paper traces the history of this weakness in the UK's petroleum fiscal regime. Evidence is provided that the progressive relaxations in the UK's petroleum fiscal regime in 1983, 1987–1988 and 1993 were: largely unnecessary to stimulate the development of new, smaller, 'marginal' fields; misguided in their assumption that such fields were more costly to develop than earlier counterparts or larger contemporary fields; and impotent compared with the effects of oil price movements. The paper concludes with a conceptualisation which illuminates why these failures of policy were not just random: they emerged from the UK's 'non-proprietorial' stance with respect to the country’s oil and gas resources, a stance which assumes responsibility for oil company profitability and vainly tries to counter market forces at the expense of government revenues

Carbon neutral policy in action: the case of Bhutan

Climate policy across the world is proceeding at a highly variable pace, with some places very committed to decarbonizing their economies and others just beginning. Emerging nations are generally just starting along this journey. However, among the few nation states that have pledged to achieve carbon neutrality, is Bhutan, a least developed country. Carbon neutrality is an ambitious climate policy that is increasingly being recognized as necessary in order to stabilize global temperature rise at 1.5°C. However, Bhutan is likely to face significant challenges in maintaining this status as the country balances its desire to grow in economic opportunities (GDP) and in human happiness (GNH). Little research has been conducted inside the policy processes to better understand how Bhutan will maintain carbon neutrality. Through open-ended, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, this study provides an inside view on the current situation and future challenges that Bhutan may face, along with the complexities associated with implementing and maintaining an ambitious carbon neutral policy. The paper highlights Bhutan's story and how it could be useful for policy learning and knowledge sharing, especially in the context of emerging nations’ climate governance

Process integration of a Calcium-looping process with a natural gas combined cycle power plant for CO2 capture and its improvement by exhaust gas recirculation

AbstractIn this study, it was sought to find an efficient way to integrate a Ca-looping process with a Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) power plant for its post-combustion CO2 capture. Compared to its application to coal combustion flue gas, Ca-looping would incur augmented energy penalty when integrated with a NGCC of which the flue gas contains only 4.0mol% CO2. The reduced CO2 concentration in the feed requires the carbonator to operate at a lower temperature and more solids to circulate between carbonator and calciner for keeping up the carbon capture efficiency at 90%. However, this study demonstrated that such negative effects could be alleviated greatly by implementing 40% exhaust gas recirculation to the NGCC with the CO2 concentration in the flue gas increasing up to 6.8%. Accordingly, the resulting net power efficiency increased notably 1.6% points in comparison to its equivalent non-EGR NGCC case and it was only 0.9% points less than amine capture case. This study exhibited that exhaust gas recirculation would be crucial in decarbonising a NGCC power plant by Ca-looping