Nearly $159 million in stimulus funding will be given by the United States Department of Energy to 41 industrial energy efficiency projects that promote the use of combined heat and power systems, district energy systems and grants to local industry.

Nine of the 41 projects that will go to industrial technologies will have the largest share at $150 million. An additional $634 million in private industry cost shares will leverage those nine awards for a total of $785 million in funding.

The nine industrial technology efficiency grantees will stage projects that promote combined heat and power district energy systems, waste energy recovery systems and energy efficiency initiatives in hospitals, utilities and industrial sites.

Combined heat and power systems, as well as district energy systems, use heat and power it generates on-site instead of using electricity derived from the grid.

Among the nine projects, the largest grant at $30 million will go to Air Products and Chemicals Inc. for its construction of a combined cycle power generation plant at Middleton, Ohio, which will process the blast furnace gas that the plant produces during iron-making operations.

Energy amounting to almost 14 trillion British thermal units (approximately 14.77 trillion kilojoules) will be saved through the nine projects alone, which is equal to saving more than 112 million gallons of gasoline yearly.

The rest of the funds, at more than $9 million, will be handed to local businesses and manufacturing facilities, university-based industrial assessment centers, state agencies, regional partnerships and the Oak Ridge Partnership for Industrial Energy Efficiency, a national technical assistance provider.

The funding will allow the department’s Industrial Technologies Program to provide those grantees with technical and financial support for implementing energy savings schemes and creating green jobs.

The 32 projects are also an extension of the department’s Save Energy Now initiative, which has saved more than 1,500 industrial facilities $218 million in costs and 35 trillion British thermal units of energy, as well as reduce 2.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

The final details for each grant are still subject to negotiation between the department and each grantee.

-   Jen Balboa