Joe

I agree with what Nick says. In fact, most industrialised nations have
signed and intend to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. That is, all except one.
Why? a) because the legislators in that country are scared stiff that if
they go for it, they will not be re-elected into Congress and b) because
the present incumbent of the White House is part of a family business
that is making its millions from fossil fuels, so why should he cut off
his nose to spite his face?

What the legislators have not got the intelligence or courage to face is
that the electors are a darned site more intelligent than they think.
Especially those that live somewhere near the coast between Maine and
Florida.

However, the important thing for us is, as the article says, to do our
utmost to conserve energy by a more reasonable choice of processes and
equipment. One point I would like to make is that we should not look at
the peak consumption of a machine. We should look at the total working
consumption. An example: let's imagine a washer requiring water at, say,
60 °C. It may have 10 kW of heating power but have power applied to the
heaters for 60% of the time. Or, it may have 15 kW of power but be on
for 35% of the time. In the first case, the actual consumption in one
hour is 6 kWh, but in the second case, with the higher power heaters, it
will be only 5.25 kWh. This happens a lot, especially on equipment with
daily switch-on/off, as a fast heating time loses less energy during the
heat-up period.

Another factor which we ignore in our industry is that the emissions of
chemicals into the atmosphere may also contribute to climate change. In
fact, most chemicals are much worse per kg emitted than CO2. The worst
of the lot are PFCs and SF6, both of which are thousands (yes, several
thousand) times worse than CO2. Happily, our industry is not a great
emitter of SF6 but we are one of the main consumers of PFCs, used for
vapour phase/condensation soldering, leak detection, semiconductor
cooling, high voltage insulation and in co-solvent cleaning. A couple of
kg of the stuff emitted is equivalent to all the CO2 a medium car will
produce in all its lifetime. HFCs and HFEs are better: they have a
Global Warming Potential (GWP) only 250 - 1500 times worse than CO2 and
most other solvents we use in fluxes, inks, for cleaning, in conformal
coating and so on have GWPs in the range of 30 - 300. Even methane
(natural gas) has a GWP quoted variously between 40 and 60, so that
dissolved organics in waste water and which decompose anaerobically from
our processes are contributing. So, yes we can make a positive
contribution in our industry not only be reducing energy consumption but
also by reducing the emissions of chemicals to a minimum.

Just some thoughts

Brian

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