To paraphrase the late Barry Goldwater, the theme of Monday (Oct. 23) night’s FOX Fall Party might has well have been “Glitz in defense of the environment is no vice, but environmentalism in the absence of alcohol is no virtue.”

At FOX’s semi-annual bash (part of why we love the network is because they love to throw fiestas) good intentions and good booze flowed in equal measure.

Held at Hollywood’s Boulevard3 club, the gala had an Eco-Casino theme. That meant that FOX talent and random assembled friends, loved ones and press were given chips to play poker, blackjack and other games. The chips were redeemable for all sorts of FOX paraphernalia pilloried from the studio store — what star of House wouldn’t love a House t-shirt, hat and sponsored rectal thermometer? — while the proceeds were split between Habitat for Humanity and the Nature Conservancy. As of the time this writer left — with at least an hour to spare — the two charities had taken in more than $18,000 with a lot more to come.

Because of the network’s strange late-August start and baseball hiatus, these Fall parties often have a bittersweet edge. At last year’s party, the entire cast of Kitchen Confidential showed up despite the fact that the comedy had already been pulled from FOX schedule. This year’s best bet for a similar fate is Happy Hour, which notched perfect cast attendance, with all of the actors enjoying themselves like you’d expect the cast of a show called Happy Hour to do.

Overall, FOX did an excellent job recruiting talent for the cause. The full casts of Prison Break, Standoff, ‘Til Death and Justice made it out. A healthy percentage of Vanished (Gale Harold? Still dead. Sorry kids.), The Loop (including Phillip Baker Hall, who gave the Wheel of Charity a spirited spin) and House (sans the good doctor himself) made appearances, as did a spirited selection of new-ish faces (Autumn Reeser, Willa Holland, Chris Pratt and Michael Nouri) from The O.C.

I opted to observe rather than gamble, passing my $500 to colleague Rick Porter, who sat down at a Hold ‘Em table with Michael Nouri and promptly took Michael Nouri down with a flush. All spades, Dr. Roberts! But I kid. It’s all for our Earth.

Some other highlights:

Weirdest sight: Wentworth Miller with hair (do I sense a Very Special Episode of Prison Break where Michael gets plugs?) and Robert “T-Bag” Knepper joking around with David Boreanaz.

Second weirdest sight: It may have been entirely innocent and I’d never dare to gossip, but Family Guy creator/voice Seth MacFarlane seemingly macking on 20-year-old War at Home cutie Kaylee DeFer (pictured) was, indeed, weird.

Yet it’s the famous Las Vegas Strip that’s modeling eco-friendly practices.

In Nevada, plans are underway to build more than 100 million square feet of new construction to the standards of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, program.

More than half of that involves casino-resort projects on and around the Las Vegas Strip, not including the 8.3 million square feet of the 7-month-old, $1.9 billion Palazzo Resort Hotel Casino, which, in May, was designated the nation’s largest LEED-certified building.

The scale of the Vegas projects, as well as the promise of 40 million tourists a year using and learning from these buildings, has excited Brendan Owens, the council’s vice president for LEED certification.

“There’s only so many places where projects like these can happen,” he says. “Las Vegas can serve as a bellwether for mainstream companies and organizations that are not necessarily focused on the environment to say, ‘You know what? These guys are doing it, so can we.’ “

The projects gunning for LEED certifications include the $2.9 billion Fontainebleau Resort, the $1.9 billion tower addition to Caesars Palace, the $4.8 billion Echelon resort and the $9.2 billion, six-high-rise CityCenter complex. Some LEED-inspired innovations:

•Boyd Gaming’s Echelon, due to open in 2010, recycles building waste by using materials left over from the Stardust resort that was imploded to make way for it, such as part of the concrete used in its fountains.

•For CityCenter, opening next year, MGM Mirage built its own energy generator to provide a fifth of its own power and to use the excess heat generated to warm the water to be used for the 7,400 hotel rooms and condo units as well as the dozens of shops, restaurants and other amenities planned.

•Solar panels heat both the Palazzo’s pools and, in the summer, the water in guest rooms.

•Fontainebleau, opening next year, plans the “first paperless hotel room” by providing an iMac computer in each suite loaded with information normally found in in-room brochures.

Each of these projects is helped along by USGBC standards that allow the developers to separate their casinos from the rest of the resorts when going for LEED status, a controversial distinction that Owens defends. Including the casinos would almost certainly sink the attainment of LEED status because the USGBC frowns on smoking in public places, and no Las Vegas casino is smoke-free.

“The way I always look at the Palazzo, for example, is that the casino is 250,000 square feet and the rest of the project is 8 million square feet, so we needed to be able to recognize the achievement on the bulk of the project,” Owens says.

About three miles from the Strip, the state’s first LEED-certified Gold project is the $107 million Molasky Corporate Center, which, among other innovations, uses recycled denim for insulation. And LEED has given a new green-neighborhood designation, one of a handful awarded nationally, to the $6 billion, 61-acre Union Park development across from the Molasky center, which will include a $360 million performing-arts center, three hotels, a Frank Gehry-designed brain research center, several office buildings and thousands of residential units.

Both MGM Mirage and Harrah’s Entertainment, with a combined 28 casino properties in Nevada, have plans to re-evaluate older properties and have taken steps such as switching to compact fluorescent lighting and installing sensors to turn off air-conditioning units when people aren’t in their rooms.

Altruism isn’t the only motivation. Nevada law provides property tax rebates of 25% to 35% to builders whose projects are LEED-certified.

And many tourists are skeptical that these eco-friendly acts can alter the city’s image.

“You think Vegas, you just think of this huge international symbol of waste,” says Mark Vitter of Manchester, England. “I love Las Vegas, but its very existence is almost a crime against nature. No amount of conservation can replace what ought not be used in the first place.”

Environmental groups wish the resorts would do more to involve the millions of Vegas tourists in the act. The Sierra Club’s Nevada director, Lydia Ball, says recycle bins are scarce at the resorts and non-existent on outdoor sidewalks along the Strip.

MGM Mirage spokesman Gordon Absher says there’s a reason for that: It’s unsightly.

“Keep in mind that we are in the resort-hotel business, and the people come to stay with us to have a four-diamond experience,” Absher says. “As practical as they are, sometimes the big blue bin just doesn’t fit in with the décor. We do recycle, but we don’t need to ask our guests to do the work for us.”

I decided to write a bit on cogeneration…since this is a technology that can have a huge positive effect on the casino industry.  The ability to save 50% on energy with free hot and cold water after an 7-10 year ROI….pretty powerful.  If your organization is interested in finding out more, or moving forward with cogeneration….please email me eric@egmgreen.com to set up an appt.

Thermal power plants (including those that use fissile elements or burn coal, petroleum, or natural gas), and heat engines in general, do not convert all of their available energy into electricity. In most heat engines, a bit more than half is wasted as excess heat (see: Second law of thermodynamics). By capturing the excess heat, CHP uses heat that would be wasted in a conventional power plant, potentially reaching an efficiency of up to 89%, compared with 55%^[4] for the best conventional plants. This means that less fuel needs to be consumed to produce the same amount of useful energy. Also, less pollution is produced for a given economic benefit.

Some tri-cycle plants have utilized a combined cycle in which several thermodynamic cycles produced electricity, and then a heating system was used as a condenser of the power plant’s bottoming cycle. For example, the RU-25 MHD generator in Moscow heated a boiler for a conventional steam powerplant, whose condensate was then used for space heat. A more modern system might use a gas turbine powered by natural gas, whose exhaust powers a steam plant, whose condensate provides heat. Tri-cycle plants can have thermal efficiencies above 80%.

An exact match between the heat and electricity needs rarely exists. A CHP plant can either meet the need for heat (heat driven operation) or be run as a power plant with some use of its waste heat.

CHP is most efficient when the heat can be used on site or very close to it. Overall efficiency is reduced when the heat must be transported over longer distances. This requires heavily insulated pipes, which are expensive and inefficient; whereas electricity can be transmitted along a comparatively simple wire, and over much longer distances for the same energy loss.

A car engine becomes a CHP plant in winter, when the reject heat is useful for warming the interior of the vehicle. This example illustrates the point that deployment of CHP depends on heat uses in the vicinity of the heat engine.

Cogeneration plants are commonly found in district heating systems of big towns, hospitals, prisons, oil refineries, paper mills, wastewater treatment plants, thermal enhanced oil recovery wells and industrial plants with large heating needs.

Thermally enhanced oil recovery (TEOR) plants often produce a substantial amount of excess electricity. After generating electricity, these plants pump leftover steam into heavy oil wells so that the oil will flow more easily, increasing production. TEOR cogeneration plants in Kern County, California produce so much electricity that it cannot all be used locally and is transmitted to Los Angeles^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Types of plants

Topping cycle plants primarily produce electricity from a steam turbine. The exhausted steam is then condensed, and the low temperature heat released from this condensation is utilised for e.g. district heating.

Bottoming cycle plants produce high temperature heat for industrial processes, then a waste heat recovery boiler feeds an electrical plant. Bottoming cycle plants are only used when the industrial process requires very high temperatures, such as furnaces for glass and metal manufacturing, so they are less common.

Large cogeneration systems provide heating water and power for an industrial site or an entire town. Common CHP plant types are:

• Gas turbine CHP plants using the waste heat in the flue gas of gas turbines
• Combined cycle power plants adapted for CHP
• Steam turbine CHP plants that use the heating system as the steam condenser for the steam turbine.
• Molten-carbonate fuel cells have a hot exhaust, very suitable for heating.

Smaller cogeneration units may use a reciprocating engine or Stirling engine. The heat is removed from the exhaust and the radiator. These systems are popular in small sizes because small gas and diesel engines are less expensive than small gas- or oil-fired steam-electric plants.

Some cogeneration plants are fired by biomass ^[5], or industrial and municipal waste