Finding a new renewable source of cheap energy is the Holy Grail of our generation. Scientists are looking at cold fusion, hydrogen and bio-fuels, but maybe they should be looking backwards instead of forwards for the next big thing. Should they be looking at steam?

Steam is what changed America from a farming country into one of industry, but that was more than a hundred years ago. Steam powered factories, and created electricity for Seattle’s first streetcar. Steam provided heat for all the downtown buildings for decades.

Steam energy fell out of favor as hydro-electric, oil and gas power became cheaper and easier to use, but what was the latest and greatest thing in the 1880’s could become the latest and greatest again.

The Seattle Steam Company never stopped boiling water, even as its customers turned elsewhere. It still provides heat for 200 buildings downtown, including many new office buildings and hotels. It’s just doing it a little differently than it did 120 years ago. Instead of burning fossil fuels, CEO Stan Gent says it’s now burning old wood products.

“It was all converted from coal, and it went to oil and from oil to natural gas,” said Gent. “In 2009, we installed the biomass facility.”

The biomass the Seattle Steam Company is now burning to boil the water consists of old wood pallets, construction scraps and tree trimmings. It’s renewable, and when incinerated at 1080-degrees it puts off very little emissions. What is put out is captured and removed, including the ash which is collected and sold for use in concrete production.

Gent believes the power of the 1890’s could be used to heat and power the world into the future.

“We don’t have a lot more oil to burn,” Gent said. “We can’t keep building coal-fired power plants so we have to find a better way to do it.”

For steam to work for the masses, though, Gent said the country would have to invest heavily in infrastructure. It would work right now in cities that still have their old steam tunnels and boilers. It would take a lot of money to drop steam plants and pipes in all the suburbs.

Gent says he sees a day when new-generation steam plants would produce electricity and steam using highly efficient turbines. They would create the electricity, and the heat produced from the process would be captured and used to create the steam without a loss in energy, Gent said. Right now, he says, America throws away about two-thirds of the thermal power it creates, enough to heat every home and business in the nation.

“And it’s all to do with saying ‘Oh yeah, we forgot about thermal energy’,” he said. “Let’s put that back in the mix, and let’s see what we can do when we bring heat and electricity together.”

What is old could be new again.