The heat treating industry is under pressure to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), and the response has been a noble effort to attain sustainability. In two previous articles in this continuing series, guest columnist Michael Mouilleseaux, general manager at Erie Steel, Ltd., discussed the U.S. Department of Energy’s initiative related to the decarbonization of industry and its potential impact on the heat treating industry.
The first installment, “US DOE Strategy Affects Heat Treaters“, appeared on April 10, 2024, in Heat Treat Today, as well as in Heat Treat Today’s March 2024 Aerospace print edition. The second in the series, “U.S. DOE Strategy: Ramifications for Heat Treaters“, appeared on June 18, 2024, and in the May 2024 Sustainability print edition. This informative conclusion to the series was first released in Heat Treat Today’s June 2024 Buyer’s Guide print edition.
The endeavor to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), albeit noble in intent, begs the question: Why is the heat treating industry being asked to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions?
Some background:
- The United States’ GHGE account for approximately 14% of the total worldwide emissions.
- According to the U.S. DOE, U.S. industry accounts for approximately 23% of the total U.S. GHGE.
- According to the U.S. DOE, “process heating” accounts for approximately 43% of the total GHGE generated by U.S. industry.
- According to the U.S. DOE, heat treating accounts for approximately 2.8% of the GHGE they have attributed to process heating.
- In sum, heat treating accounts for 0.3% of the total U.S. GHGE (23% x 43% x 2.8%), and 0.04% of the worldwide GHGE (14% x 23% x 43% x 2.8%).
Why is the Department of Energy imposing natural gas restrictions on an industry that they have calculated to be responsible for 0.3% of the country’s total emissions?
The answer has two parts. First, natural gas has been deemed “unacceptable” due to its generation of CO2 as byproducts of combustion, and our industry has been swept up in an uninformed effort to stem global warming (or as it is now known, climate change). Remember: Heat treating accounts for just 0.04% of global GHGE!
Second, this administration has spent something between several hundred billion and a trillion U.S. dollars to incentivize power, transportation, and industrial sectors in their effort to stem global warming. Years from now, we will look back at this as one of the greatest capital reallocations in our history. If we can accept that the “past is a prologue,” we have a storied history of government failures to determine the future of the agricultural, aircraft, and financial sectors. This is already happening in Western Europe: Power is substantially more expensive, and industrial output has dropped nearly 6% for the past two years — the European Investment bank attributes the reduction in industrial output to “elevated energy costs.”
Perhaps it’s time for us to take notice and slow down this effort until such a time that we have the technology in place to accomplish decarbonization without eviscerating our industrial, transportation, and power industries. A greatly overused term today is “existential threat” — but our livelihood, our national security, and our way of life are, in fact, on the line.
On www.heattreattoday.com/factsheetDOE, you can utilize the one-page resource to let governmental officials know what our industry is, who we are, who we employ, and the effect this effort has in regulating us out of business.
I want to thank Surface Combustion, Gasbarre, and Super Systems Inc. for the guidance they provided me with in navigating the technology of this subject matter.
Any errors contained herein are mine and mine alone.
About the Author:
General Manager at Erie Steel, Ltd.
Sourced from the author
Michael Mouilleseaux is general manager at Erie Steel, Ltd. He has been at Erie Steel in Toledo, OH since 2006 with previous metallurgical experience at New Process Gear in Syracuse, NY, and as the director of Technology in Marketing at FPM Heat Treating LLC in Elk Grove, IL. Michael attended the stakeholder meetings at the May 2023 symposium hosted by the U.S. DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy.
For more information: Contact Michael at mmouilleseaux@erie.com.
