Years ago I did some process and project management consulting for a big powertrain manufacturer in Maryland. They used to be (part of) an American company, but as time passed the became a unit of a Swedish one.

Power train manufacturers have, by necessity, something they called test cells. They're rooms where an engine can be attached to a dummy shaft and run to evaluate changes to design, or test assumptions, or any of a million other things.

In Maryland, no attempt was made to capture the work done by these engines, nor was any attempt made to get value from the (hot!) exhaust.

At a similar facility in Sweden, though, the test cell engine output was tied to a power generation and storage setup, and the exhaust was captured to heat the building.

They were built at the same time. It's always baffled me.