In 2009, the company generated 29% of its revenue from selling steam coal to power plants, and 10% from sales of coking and pulverized coal that feeds the blast furnaces at steel mills and other metallurgical operations.
Gas turbines, steam turbines, nuclear power plants, high-speed trains, these are the areas he believes Hitachi can still be a world beater, especially in the developing world.
Geothermal power plants turn hot water into steam or vapor to run a turbine and generate electricity, after which the water is injected back into the underground geothermal reservoir.
On the other hand, if the industry scraps all of its smaller and older plants, Credit Suisse estimates, steam coal demand would drop by 15% to 30%, or as much as 324 million tons a year, while gas demand would increase 8% to 16%, or as much as 3 trillion cubic feet a year.
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But Ragnarsson says Iceland's volcanic landscape is a world treasure and should not be criss-crossed with steam pipes and transmission lines or pocked with power plants.
Royal Dutch Shell ( RDS - news - people ), has put his experience with petrochemical plants to work, making sure that steam used in the pretreatment process is recycled in other stages.
To supply the extra juice, utilities turn on inefficient single-cycle gas turbines, which turn 25% of the fuel's energy into electricity, as opposed to 45% for combined-cycle plants that use turbine exhaust to make steam to run a second generator.
It's trying to sell its solar product to industrial customers, including coal-fired plants, which would use both the sun and coal to make steam.
Legge notes that newer fossil fuel plants use the heat that was once wasted to turn an extra steam turbine, a process known as combined cycle.
Tellingly, about two-thirds of bids for solar energy contracts last year (by electricity generated) were for photovoltaic projects and only a third were for solar thermal power plants, which deploy vast arrays of mirrors to heat liquids and produce steam to drive an electricity-generating turbine.
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In London, West German cities and New York, hundreds of plants burn 4 million tons of refuse each year, heat water, produce steam, and supply electricity.
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Areva would buy the panels for its hybrid solar power plant, though it is unclear how exactly Areva plants to integrate the electricity-generating panels with its solar-concentrating mirrors and steam system.
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