Turning America’s Waste Heat Into 15 Gigawatts of Power

Factories and gas pipelines vent heat into the air every day. Captured, that heat can produce clean electricity around the clock.

Today, the US gets less than 1 gigawatt of power from waste heat, but Department of Energy estimates put the potential at up to 15 gigawatts, enough to power more than 10 million homes. Other countries already put far more of their waste heat to work.

On this episode, Jigar is joined by Janice Tran and Marisa Sweeney. Janice is CEO and co-founder of Kanin Energy, a developer of waste heat to power and other industrial efficiency projects. Marisa is a principal on the Structured Finance team at S2G Investments, which led Kanin’s latest funding round. Both worked with Jigar at Generate Capital.

In this episode:

• How waste heat helped a university ride out a summer of sky-high power prices
• Why Europe has used its waste heat for decades while the US mostly vented it
• What kept American waste heat untapped long after the technology was proven
• Why banks would rather finance the 12th waste heat plant than the first
• The high school job at Walmart that came full circle for Janice
• “We have a goal to be the largest waste heat to power developer in the entire world.”

Links:

Our website: https://www.energyempire.fm

“Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” by Amory Lovins (Foreign Affairs, 1976): https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1976-10-01/energy-strategy-road-not-taken

S2G Investments Structured Finance: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/strategy/structured-finance

S2G Investments report: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/report-illusion-of-crowds

Octopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

Our merch store: https://energy-empire.bonfire.com/collection/all-products