NOT BY PEANUTS ALONE

By utilizing what would otherwise be waste heat, the efficiency of the Gelsenkirchen power plant will jump from 38% to 80%, realizing fuel savings of up to 10 million tons of crude oil a year (by shutting down as many domestic heating plants as there are customers for the new service), and air pollution will be reduced by the same measure.

The idea is not new; waste heat from power plants for domestic and office heating has been used in Prague, Czechoslovakia, since the 30's and is widely used in the rest of Europe; it is being used in Memphis, Tenn., now.

What is new is the extent and the motivation of the system. The West German government is studying the possibility of installing similar networks nationwide, providing heat for all cities with more than 40,000 population. The waste heat would come not only from power plants, but also from coke ovens, blast furnaces, incinerators, and other major heat generators. The total cost would be a staggering $100 billion, but it would eventually be paid for in fuel savings. The STEAG line is an initial study project before the decision on a national network is made.

Also new is the motivation. Apart from the reduced air pollution which would hardly justify the staggering cost

Germany faces an energy squeeze, as do other European countries. They are all going nuclear, many of them much faster than the US. Unlike Britain or Norway, Germany has no North Sea oil, and unlike the welfare states of Britain and Italy, she is not yet going down the drain. So the Germans plan to practice the only type of energy conservation that makes any sense -cutting the waste, not the use, of energy. The peanuts and pineapples are a welcome spin-off.

Not macht erfinderisch, say the Germans; necessity is the mother of invention. After the Arab oil embargo, Europe's biggest industrial power had to invent new forms of energy conservation, and they did. There is no such thing as the bottom of the barrel; there is only unwillingness and inability to scrape deeper or find a new barrel.

It all happened before. Until the discovery of the West Indies, the only sweetness known to Europe was honey and stuff like maple syrup. In the Napoleonic wars, the British blockaded the Continent, and there was no more sugar.

Wasn't there? A Mediterranean weed was cultivated into the sugarbeet, and when the blockade was lifted, Europe stayed with it - the substitute proved to be preferable to the original.

When necessity has dispelled the present mood of technophobia. no-growth, and shamenvironmentalism, as necessity surely will, the utilization of "waste" heat will remain.

Along with the pineapples and peanuts.