Waste heat

Waste heat recycling is indeed a good idea. It's a proven one, too. Hybrid cars, for instance, use waste heat from brake friction to fuel batteries that power the engines on highways. But whether or not it should play a major role in the new energy future, or just a subsidiary one is something that the market will figure out if we pursue a smart climate change policy. We can be sure, though, that a). it should play some role in the new energy future and b). it will play almost no role in the new energy future if our political leaders decide that it's a higher priority to subsidize the hell out of existing high-pollution energy companies than it is to let clean ones compete fairly.

Update: Jim informs to ignorant fool that hybrids actually appropriate a car's kinetic energy and convert it into electric energy, as opposed to converting the waste heat created during braking into electrical energy. Having abandoned my car obsession in my late teens and never read about these contraptions, I'm going to hang my head in shame, defer to Jim (as I usually do), and hide behind the suggestion that my version of a hybrid car might work in theory and that waste heat has other applications in hybrid automobiles.