ABSTRACT
First, I would like to tell you how delighted I was to hear about the progress that has been made in Spain in the area of cogeneration. I lectured for several days to Spanish industries about the benefits of cogeneration fifteen years ago, as an invited speaker of the Institute Tecnológico de Postgraduados, as I recall. And at the time there was hardly any effort in cogeneration and it was a delight to hear today the progress that has
been made. The second point that I want to make is, as far as efficiency is concerned, when one calculates correctly, I may add, the efficiency of energy utilization by industrialized nations one finds that this efficiency is between 12 % and 15 % on the average, It is very low and therefore there exists tremendous opportunities for improvement. To be sure it will never be 100 %. But nevertheless there is plenty of room for improvements. Having said that, however, since improvements must always be cost effective I must add, the energy problems of either the advanced or the developing countries can not be resolved by addressing only the cost effective energy utilization aspect of the energy equation. We need and we must also to develop a major new energy source and therefore we have to approach the problem both from the point of view of new energy sources as well as from the point of view of better utilization of the sources that we have or renewable resources that we may develop in the future. Mr. Fee this morning made a very interesting statement. He started his remarks by reminding us of how much money will be required to invest in order to achieve certain savings of energy within the European Community. And as I recall his numbers they were in the tens of billions ECUS or something like that. At face value, these numbers suggest that a large investment is required in order to achieve energy savings and if one does not thinks carefully about the problem one might be tempted to assume that this is an expensive proposition. The only way one can pass such a judgement, however, is to compare these type of
investment with that would have been required in order to achieve the same energy services by developing new energy sources. And under the present circumstances one would have found that the investment required for the known new energy sources would have been much larger than the estimate of the European Community, for providing the same services with cost effective energy utilization. And for that reason the numbers that Mr. Fee quoted are not exorbitant. They serve literally our best interest in the realm which they can be applied. Finally, the fourth point that want to make is how all these remarks are related to the environment. I like to oversimplify the problem by saying that the cost effectiveness of any activity in our society, any impact on our environment, literally depends on the amount of resources that we use. How many Tons of whatever thing we have to dig from the ground, process, transport, install, maintain and so on. To the extent that we achieve cost effective energy utilization by using better equipment, and I underline the cost effective aspect, invariably and on the average, that implies that we are using less materials, less Tons of materials. And the fewer tons of materials we use the lesser the burden on the environment and for that reason cogeneration as one part of this effort of cost effective energy utilization is a very good prospect and has been a very good prospect in protecting the environment.
