Local media follow-up from Skagit Valley Herald

Our newspaper did several stories on us in the early years; recently they decided to check in again to see where we had ended up.  The result was some fine journalism, a comprehensive article that ran on the front page of the Sunday paper a week ago and found here.

People Eating Tasty Animals

In honor of Labor Day barbecues, and as a way to get a post up exactly a year after my last entry, I give you my attempt to put American consumption of meat and animal products in perspective.  Take a group of one hundred average Americans; how many animals do they need to support their meat, egg, and milk habits?  Well, over the course of one year:

• three dairy cows
• one hundred laying hens
• ten beef cows
• thirty-six pigs
• one hundred turkeys
• two thousand chickens

That's right--besides the cows and hens that produce milk and eggs, you and your ninety-nine friends require the slaughter of dozens of large mammals and several thousand birds!  The meat consumption numbers are in the chart below (note the huge rise in chicken, nearly tied with beef at sixty pounds per person per year), but the underlying reality is lots and lots of animals being raised in anticipation of slaughter for our enjoyment.

Behind these animals are others, too: several dairy replacement heifers and a bull, a couple sows (mother pigs) and a boar, a couple dozen chickens and female turkeys with a few roosters and a tom (male turkey) for continuing to grow the population.  As farms (or, for pork and poultry, the huge industrial operations that have replaced farms) grow larger, these animals move further out of our view, but they're still waiting to feed us all the same.

A gallon a day

I recently ran across the latest gasoline-usage data for Washington and Oregon presented by the Sightline Institute.  The headline of the report was that consumption continues to decline; while ten gallons a week was normal in the 1970s, "during the average week in 2011, Washington residents consumed 7.3 gallons of gasoline per person. In Oregon, weekly gas consumption totaled 7.1 gallons per person...[this was the] lowest level since 1962—back when a gallon of gasoline cost 31 cents.  Similarly, per person gas consumption in Washington fell to its lowest level since 1965."

The trend is encouraging, primarily stemming from less driving.  "Annual vehicle mileage per capita has fallen by 13 percent over the last decade...it’s as if every driver left their car in the garage for a month and a half each year. These per-capita declines have offset population growth, leading to a virtual flat-lining of total driving on state roads for most of the last decade."  After substantial improvement in mileage in the 1980s, cars haven't gotten that much more efficient in recent years; since they continue to last longer, even new fuel-economy standards will take a long time to have an effect.  However, raw mileage reductions aren't over; "demographic trends provide good reason to believe that miles driven per capita will continue to fall. Once drivers hit the age of 45, they drive less."

When I checked my gasoline-purchasing records, I found that I too use at least a gallon of gasoline every day.  That means I buy six pounds of highly-concentrated liquid energy,  mix it with oxygen and combust it, producing about eighteen pounds of carbon dioxide, day after day. This energy is extracted as crude oil from Alaska or Alberta at great expense, transported to Northwest Washington, refined, and made available to me for about four dollars a gallon--a ridiculously low price relative to the amount of work the gasoline does moving my 3,000-pound car around, but adding up to billions of dollars a year as a cost to our region.  Hopefully, I can find some efficiencies and become a part of trend--that or just get older, when I will drive less too!

"23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism"

I bought this book by Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang a while back after reading some reviews online; with the paperback coming out in two weeks, we should see another round of comments soon. Written after the 2008 financial crisis, "23 Things" is a crisp read that hammers home its message that economics is about good policy, not using reverence to the free market to accept bad outcomes.

As a renewable-energy entrepreneur frustrated by our nation's lack of a plan to power itself while we continue to deplete our resource base AND spend billions buying from overseas, this book was a breath of fresh air. Our society isn't doing much to prevent the next financial crisis, either, but "23 Things" carefully places the blame in the proper place--with the policymakers rather than the free market to which many profess their devotion.

I've put together a selection of points from six of the "Things" that support my contention that the United States needs to get serious about domestic production of renewable energy equipment and capacity, using government policy to drive this production as quickly as possible:
Thing 1. There is no such thing as a free market
"Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them." We accept that we aren't allowed to buy and sell human organs, unapproved drugs, or court decisions; other rules can be made to further policy goals, rather than simply accepting outcomes and crediting the "invisible hand".
Thing 7. Free-market policies rarely make poor countries rich
"With only a few exceptions, all of today's rich countries, including Britain and the US--the supposed homes of free trade and free market--have become rich through the combinations of protectionism, subsidies, and other policies that today they advise the developing countries to avoid." China's explosive economy, with all its government controls and restrictions, resembles the United States during its late-19th-century growth into the world's richest nation; we don't necessarily have to play by different rules today, and we certainly shouldn't force desperate countries in crisis to do so.
Thing 9. We do not live in a post-industrial age
"It looks as if we are spending ever higher shares of our income on services not because we are consuming ever more services in absolute terms but mainly because services are becoming more expensive in relative terms." We buy more goods than ever, but more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing means goods are also cheaper than ever; we can pretend that these goods are destined to made elsewhere, or we can work to retain our vital manufacturing sector.
Thing 12. Governments can pick winners
"Decisions that are good for individual firms may not be good for the national economy as a whole." Especially in East Asia, the development of heavy industry (which has succeeded at the expense of the United States) was driven by governments rather than private business; the narrower and shorter-term focus of American businesses mean they can't and won't compete.
Thing 17. More education in itself is not going to make a country richer
"What really matters in the determination of national prosperity is not the educational levels of individuals but the nation's ability to organize individuals into enterprises with high productivity." Even if every worker in America graduates from college, it won't matter if they all end up working in finance and health care while we buy goods made elsewhere.
Thing 19. Despite the fall of communism, we are still living in planned economies
"Modern capitalist economies are made up of large, hierarchical corporations that plan their activities in great detail.... Therefore, the question is not whether you plan or not. It is about planning the right things at the right level." No corporation would operate completely guided by fluctuating market prices, so we shouldn't expect society to do so either.

I wrote almost two years ago about the energy overhaul needed in the United States; with energy usage on the rise again and oil prices increasing, we need good policy more than ever.

Abundance and Industrial Solutions

Thanksgiving provides an appropriate occasion for more thoughts on food waste. Of course, it's our everyday patterns--not our feasts--that should determine how we deal with waste, so here is my own food story.

Once or twice each day, I put four teaspoons of ground coffee into an unbleached filter and make a half-pot of coffee. The next time around, I have to dispose of a wet filter full of depleted grounds weighing several ounces. While one day I might toss an apple core and the next some lettuce scraps, the coffee filters are my heaviest and most consistent waste stream, one that for some time was going straight to the landfill.

Why didn't I use a recycling service? Waste Management charges $100 a year to pick up a green waste bin. It's not hard to find ways to dispose of grass clippings and I have no desire to add to the profits of a multi-billion dollar company (new motto: "Think Green") when they already make $200 a year disposing of my garbage; so, for years I tossed my food waste in the trash bin.

A little over a year ago, I shifted my habits--not with any new service or source of information online, but with two simple tools I'd noticed others using. I set up a common back-yard composting bin, and purchased a beautiful vented stainless-steel pail for food scraps. Now I put each day's coffee filters in the pail, along with bits of fruit and vegetable waste. The pail sits on the counter next to the coffee maker, breathing through its filters and avoiding the odor that can result when the process of biological breakdown starts prematurely indoors. Every couple days, I go out to the back yard with a food-scraps pail and my favorite four-tine garden fork. I open the top hatch, through which I've been loading compost bin for the last year. I re-mix partially-decomposed previous layers of organic material, add in fresh food waste, and cover over with wilted grass clippings. The middle of the bin continues to cure, but I'll dig out the compost at the bottom through the side hatch and put it into the garden next spring in lieu of a branded bag of material purchased at a big-box store.

Now I don't need another huge truck getting four miles per gallon roaring up to my curb every week or two. I don't need to pay another utility bill for the privilege of sending away food I already paid for to be turned into compost that someone can try to sell back to me later. Better yet, I'm much more aware of the flows of organic material through the kitchen and the yard.

Our industrial economy expends huge amounts of effort and diesel moving material around. As long as green waste recycling is treated as only marginally different than our current model of paying to make stuff disappear, it lacks long-term sustainability. Our developed-world level of wealth allows us the luxury of not thinking about waste beyond the comforting thought that someone else is recycling a bit of it.

It is ridiculous to package food, distribute it, bring it home, fail to eat it, haul it away from the home, and then finally try to salvage all this wastefulness by recovering a bit of energy or fertilizer. If we really value renewable electricity and soil amendments, we could take a cue from Europe and just skip the whole wasting-food step altogether. The Germans harvest two million acres of food-grade crops every year and feed them straight to anaerobic digesters, producing over a gigawatt of electricity and building up their soils at the same time. Or we could work to make our waste volumes as small as possible and process them with equally small-scale backyard or neighborhood-level systems. The savings, and the sustainability, would slowly but surely grow in abundance.

Farm Power Rexville Open House

Three years ago was a beautiful October day in Northwest Washington, a perfect day to break ground on our first manure-to-energy project. Today the weather is miserable, but at Farm Power Rexville the digester bacteria are happily making biogas in their 100F slurry environment. While after years of operation we often take our manure bacteria for granted, we want to celebrate their hard work with an open house; we know many of you have already seen the digester, but as always--you’re invited!

The facility will be open from 10 AM to noon next Saturday, November 5th, at 18866 Beaver Marsh Road, Mount Vernon—here is Google map of the digester location. Please come, bring shoes that can get dirty, and any more questions you may have.

In other news, the USDA finally announced this year's Renewable Energy for America Program awards, and our two Oregon projects made the cut. The green power industry is looking at a few lean years coming up, but we are thankful for the opportunity to get a couple more digesters in the ground while we can.

Seattle Times on Farm Power

The deputy business editor from the Seattle Times came up to Rexville a few weeks ago, and the resulting story came out today. The video attached to the story (also available here) combines nice views of Skagit Valley's tulip fields while I talk about the value of manure in an agricultural system! The Times also created a great visual representation of the digester, which I've attached at left.

Why go electric?

I spent another $50 earlier this week to have the Toyota dealership service my Prius. Normally, this doesn't bother me too much, but the charge came just after finding the "Service" section of the Tesla Roadster entry while browsing Wikipedia:

Electric vehicles require much less service and maintenance than internal combustion engine vehicles. They do not require routine oil changes. They do not have any tailpipe emissions and therefore do not require any muffler or exhaust system work. They do not require replacement spark plugs, pistons, hoses or belts. The conventional parts of the car—including the brakes, body work and any interior and HVAC work—can be performed by any qualified automotive technician.

I already know that I can't fit into a Tesla Roadster, but the Model S could be my option for breaking free of auto maintenance costs forever. That, and instant torque propelling a sedan from 0-60 in 5.6 seconds!

Rainier Biogas gets carbon offset support courtesy of NativeEnergy

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt., March 22, 2011 — A project in Washington State will support local dairy farms and reduce approximately 4,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year. eBay, Stonyfield Farm, Brita, and Effect Partners are enabling this project through the purchase of NativeEnergy’s "Help Build" carbon offsets.

Conventionally, manure storage on dairy farms results in the release of methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than CO2, into the atmosphere. The Rainier Farm Biogas Project in Enumclaw, WA, will avoid this pollution through the construction of a manure digester.

Three family-owned farms will feed their manure to the sealed, heated system. None of the farms is large enough to support a digester by itself, but through collaboration, they can jointly support it. The digester will capture and burn the methane to produce electricity in a 1-megawatt electric generator, which will deliver renewable energy to the region’s electrical grid.

The developer, Rainier Biogas LLC, turned to NativeEnergy to help provide financing for the project. By selling the carbon reductions that will result from the digester, NativeEnergy was able to provide critical upfront funding for construction. Through NativeEnergy’s innovative "Help Build" carbon offsets, eBay, Stonyfield Farm, Brita, and Effect Partners were able to purchase a share of the verified emissions reductions that the project will produce over a 10-year period.

Jeff Bernicke, President of NativeEnergy, said: “This project shows that, through a cooperative effort, our "Help Build" carbon offsets bring new carbon reduction projects on line.

Kevin Maas of Rainier Biogas, the project developer, noted: “Everyone in the community will benefit from this project. It will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect the area’s sensitive rivers and streams, and provide low-cost bedding for local farmers.”

To learn more, view the Rainier project page.

About Native Energy

NativeEnergy is a leading provider of verified carbon offsets and renewable energy credits. NativeEnergy’s "Help Build" carbon offsets help finance the construction of Native American, family farm, and community-based carbon reduction projects. For more information, visit: www.nativeenergy.com.

About Rainier Biogas

Plugging into the century-old dairy community nestled at the foot of Mount Rainier, Rainier Biogas is the third anaerobic manure digester developed in Western Washington by Farm Power Northwest. The two previous projects improve manure handling on partner farms while each producing up to 750kW of electricity. Rainier Biogas is proud to commit to more long-term investment and cooperation with the family-run dairy farms in the Pacific Northwest. For more information, visit www.farmpower.com.

CONTACT:  NativeEnergy Contact:
     Thomas H. Rawls
     VP, Sales & Marketing
     802-861-7707 x215
     tom.rawls@nativeenergy.com

     Rainier Biogas Contact:
     Kevin Maas
     360-424-4519
     farmpowernw@gmail.com

The Continuing Reign of Finance?

I graduated from Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI) with an MBA in sustainable business three and a half years ago. Farm Power was only a few months old, and one of our biggest hurdles was raising capital. While I had discussed this extensively with other interested classmates, our education hadn't focused much on finance--with the notable exception of one spectacular Entrepreneurship class, we had spent little time on the mechanics of debt, securities, and such.

Today, Farm Power has perfected its formula for funding capital-intensive projects, borrowing millions of dollars from sustainable banks while raising equally large amounts from investors and grants. I haven't kept up with the curriculum at BGI, but I have noticed that guest speakers these days are definitely trending towards finance. Unfortunately, it appears that most of the topics end up being on the service side of the industry--analysis, wealth management, and such. And all I can think of is: "None of this really matters!"

It probably sounds strange to hear this, so let me explain: what I see is an economy with vast amounts of money sloshing back and forth, try to cheat basic laws of physics and biology. New sources of energy or sustenance can't be conjured out of thin air, so finance turns to speculating in derivatives of the tangible. The simple existence of hedge funds and their manager compensation norms is evidence enough that there is no shortage of capital willing to pay obscene fees for a chance to cut corners on actual wealth creation. Meanwhile, creating sustainable new sources of food, electricity, or transport is hard, risky, and requires a long-term view.

What this world needs is not another level of money managers or more analysis of mutual funds or even another investment bank; what it needs is more people working to create long-term value that is actually worthy of financing. Our system of worshiping at the temple of finance may or may not be beyond help, but there are ways for truly good ideas to access capital and investors who want to provide it.

What about our own waste?

After dozens of posts, readers may be growing impatient with my focus on dairy cow manure. So, for a change of pace, I turn to pondering the organic waste that comes out of own homes--the majority of it food waste but also excrement. This potential energy leaves by two main routes--the sewer system (from both toilets and sink disposals) and the garbage system. In rough terms, each American dumps and flushes a pound of "fuel" every day, to be dispersed in sewage-treatment plants and landfills. I say dispersed because although both wastewater-treatment plants and landfills can be designed to capture some of the energy in garbage and sewage, their main goal is to make waste go away. And the material that arrives at these plants is already heavily diluted by water or inert solids, so energy production remains inefficient.

But what if we diverted all this organic waste--perhaps sending it in special pipes to small, energy-producing local digesters? One pound per person per day, converted into biogas, can be burned to produce about one kilowatt-hour of electricity--with enough extra heat (left over after warming the digester) to bring five gallons of water to a comfortable temperature for showering. Unfortunately, the typical American needs about twelve kilowatt-hours for household use, along with similarly excessive amounts of heat.

So there, in short, is why I focus on dairy manure: it produces far more energy than the farms could ever use and involves a lower "yuck factor" than what we dump and flush!

Lynden Approaching Completion

Four months after we broke ground, our Lynden digester project is almost ready to come online. The Bellingham Herald ran a story on our progress (and a great photo of guys from Andgar working on the flare). There are also a lot more pictures in the Whatcom Farm Friends photo galleries on the project.

Spreading the word

In a few weeks, I'll be leaving the Pacific Northwest (for the first time in almost a year!) to go speak about the Farm Power experience. On October 18th, I will be joining hundreds of bioenergy professionals in Des Moines for the BioCycle "Renewable Energy from Organics Recycling" conference. BioCycle magazine provides regular coverage of the digester industry along with composting and other types of waste recycling, so they draw a wide audience and we hope that BioCycle will bring this conference to our region in the future--by then we hope to have many more projects to talk about.

Meanwhile, our friends at NW Farms & Food recently wrote an story on our progress; like all the articles on the website, this one combines depth with clarity, but it also managed to capture the genesis of Farm Power better than I'd ever heard it expressed--with one of my quotes, no less!

"I was thinking about manure digesters [in 2004], but I figured that by the time I could do anything, half the farmers in the county would already be working on their own project. Lo and behold a year later — nothing. Nothing at all!”

“So that’s when we headed down this path,” he said. “If nobody was doing it, yet it was clear that it could be done, that it should be done, then we just had to figure out a better way to do it!”

And we continue to work every day to get digesters built throughout the Pacific Northwest, coming up with little innovations that--unexceptional by themselves--add up to real renewable energy projects that otherwise wouldn't happen. Construction on Farm Power Lynden is nearly complete, and regular readers know we're pushing forward on other biogas installations. I'll try to post a little more often this fall to keep spreading the word online as well as on the road.

Summer in the manure business

While many people slow down a bit during the summer, we at Farm Power have been steadily accelerating. Our builder Andgar has added a photo page for our Lynden project, showing the rapid construction progress there. It appears likely that our second digester will be completed in half the time it took to build the first one--it helps to build during the summer rather than starting in November!

We've also been getting out in the community a bit, finally attracting the attention of business/tech website Xconomy after giving an update at the Northwest Energy Angels summer social. And two different websites dedicated to spreading good ideas have Farm Power material: NWCleanTech--a new site focused on "connecting regional innovation"--added Farm Power to its list of featured Pacific Northwest companies and also put us on their cool interactive map, while a member of Planet Forward--a project from George Washington University--put together a multi-media post called "Visiting an Anaerobic Methane Digester" after touring the Rexville facility.

Speaking of tours, we've scheduled one more tour for Saturday, August 21st. We'll be meeting at 11am by the picnic shelter next to the Rexville Grocery, giving a little overview, and then proceeding to the digester. Afterwards, I look forward to relaxing back at the Rexville's mini-restaurant and continuing to discuss renewable energy; we're still raising money for a little while longer, so come get your questions answered.

Further growth at Farm Power

Last year around this time, we still had yet to fill our first digester's tank with manure; how things have changed. Now--besides all the operating experience from running Farm Power Rexville near Mount Vernon--our second digester is under construction, our third project has been financed and is in permitting, and we just received a $1 million grant from the Oregon Department of Energy for a Tillamook installation! The Tillamook region features dozens of medium-sized farms that pasture extensively in a temperature environment. It's an ideal location for one of our multi-farm community digesters. We've been talking to area farmers for over a year and are happy to be able to move forward; some locals have been happy to hear about us as well and we quickly received good coverage in the Tillamook Headlight-Herald.

To help us fund this rapid expansion, we are going back out to our supporters to raise more equity--by selling ownership units in Farm Power. For angel investors, we've been posting information on AngelSoft and we can take money from accredited investors anywhere in the United States. However, we are most excited about our ability to accept investment from a broad swathe of Washington State residents through a small public offering; an info sheet on the offering can be found at our company homepage. Anyone interested in further information can request our offering circular by contacting us or writing to invest@farmpower.com. One of the best ways to understand what we do is to attend one of our upcoming tours, currently scheduled for 10am on Saturday July 24th and 2pm on Tuesday July 27th--we update the schedule regularly at http://www.farmpower.com. We have gotten great support from our current members, and we look forward to expanding the Farm Power membership.

A digester in action

As Farm Power grows, we keep meeting more and more people who have heard of what we do but have never seen a manure digester; we'd like to start changing that.

First, we recently posted a YouTube video hoping that our maintenance work could get on the legendary Discover Channel show "Dirty Jobs". Mike Rowe has already done a show involving a manure digester, but we're sure working at ours would be more fun!

Back in March, a local television station did a five-minute segment giving a the best video overview to date of the Rexville project; they also took some footage at the Lynden site, but only a greenhouse was visible at that point so we'll have to wait for another segment to cover our second project.

Finally, for those who want to see manure-to-energy in person, we've scheduled a tour for Wednesday July 14th. We'll be meeting at 2pm by the picnic shelter next to the Rexville Grocery, giving a little overview, and then proceeding to the digester. Since the actual experience can be a bit smelly, don't hit the tour on the way to an important social event, but we do encourage anyone interested to come. Give us a call or send us an E-mail if you have any questions.

Farm Power Lynden Construction Underway

Excavation has finally begun on our second digester; nine months after Andgar completed our Rexville project, their team is going back to work on a similar but slightly bigger manure-to-energy plant. We celebrated this important step with a groundbreaking ceremony--almost a hundred farmers, community members, and supporters joined us at the site on a gray but pleasant afternoon.

After people had a chance to get some refreshments, we had a short program. Whatcom County Executive Pete Kremen spoke about the importance of agriculture; we were also joined by 42nd-District Representatives Kelli Linville and Doug Ericksen as well as Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike and Lynden Mayor Scott Korthuis. Our regional USDA Rural Development business program representative Sharon Exley talked about building the funding package for the project through the REAP program. Next, we emphasized the importance of Puget Sound Energy and its Green Power program both in our comments and those by PSE's Tom Maclean. Finally, we invited up a whole line of project partners and turned over some shovelfuls of earth!


Whatcom Farm Friends added an event page for the groundbreaking to their project photo album--it already had greenhouse pictures, and Farm Friends will soon start adding construction photos. A reporter from the Bellingham Business Journal wrote a nice little story on the event, and other coverage included an article at the Biomass Magazine website as well as extensive re-printing of the press release from Puget Sound Energy.

We would like to extend our appreciation to everyone who helped us get to groundbreaking--it's taken two years, but the project is underway and very exciting! Stay tuned for further reports.

Lynden Groundbreaking June 28th

It's been almost two years since we started exploring manure-to-energy possibilities in Whatcom County, and about a year since we started committing money to a project. So we're thrilled to finally announce groundbreaking on the Farm Power Lynden digester--we'll be having a ceremony on Monday, June 28th at 2pm. The photo above looks from the corner of our site towards the greenhouse we'll be supplying with hot water. You can see what Whatcom Farm Friends wrote about the project in its most recent newsletter here; give us a call at (360) 424-4519 or drop us a note at farmpower (at) gmail.com for more details--everyone's invited to the event.

CHP Update

Well ahead of my once-a-year pace of writing about combined heat and power (CHP), it's already time for another blog posting on the subject. An updated combined heat and power database shows additions in Washington state during the past two years: a couple manure digesters and a small wastewater treatment plant started running engines on biogas, while a landfill is producing upgraded renewable natural gas and a paper mill now burns its waste for process heat and electricity.

Farm Power Rexville keeps running steadily, so not much news to add there. But manure-to-energy continues to be a favorite media topic: a cow-powered data center concept by Hewlett-Packard engineers got lots of attention. While the overall concept isn't news to us, the paper also described cooling with waste heat from engine-generators by "silica gel-water adsorption chillers" which "can be driven by near-ambient temperature heat."


The diagram above shows an elegantly-integrated system capable of providing electricity, heat, and cooling at higher efficiency than anything else I've seen. A boiler allows optimizing of heat output or upgrading hot water to steam. Even if other renewable energy technologies struggle for traction as the era of stimulus draws to a close, the future of ever-smarter CHP gets brighter and brighter.

Clean Heat and Power

I recently heard Stan Gent of Seattle Steam speak about the importance of centralizing heat production, as his company does for buildings in downtown Seattle. One comment stuck with me: if we electrify transportation, we are doing something more important than just shifting emissions from millions of small exhaust pipes to a few bigger power plants--we are actually radically shifting waste heat from our highway to central locations where it can be put to use.

The concept of cogeneration--producing both electricity and usable heat--is not new; I wrote about it last year, mainly focusing on the decades-old practice of wood-products plants burning their waste for process heat and power. In the Northwest, such plants already produce as much renewable energy as the region's entire wind industry. However, I believe that vastly-more-widespread cogeneration must play an integral future role in increasing our efficiency--and sustainability. Combined heat and power (CHP) recovers 60-80% of the energy in its fuel; car engines run at only about 20% efficiency. At some point in the coming years, we will no longer have the luxury of wasting 80% of the energy we put into our fuel tanks.

Because CHP uses fuel so much more efficiently than typical power plants, the industry has begun calling it "clean heat and power", or when some of the heat runs an absorption chiller, "clean cooling, heat, and power". Even when burning natural gas rather than biomass, CHP is indeed one of the cleanest options in our energy portfolio. Imagine the effect if that sustainable electricity can be used to replace the combustion of diesel, gasoline, or even biofuel: moving all that heat off the highways, into businesses and even homes that need it, is exactly the kind of radical shift we need for the 21st century.