Barriers and attitudes of the electric utilities to industrial CHP in the European community

Abstract

In the European Community (EC) there is a growing recognition of combined heat and power (CHP) as a way of saving primary energy and of limiting emissions of noxious substances. In several member states, government authorities set new rules to support the access of CHP to the electricity market. The future of CHP in the EC looks certainly brighter than its past. Nevertheless, the realization of CHP projects is still troubled by a variety of barriers. We identified the barriers in the industrial CHP market and evaluated the attitudes of the electric utilities towards industrial CHP in the different EC member states. This article gives an overview of the main results. The analysis concludes that in several EC member states two important obstacles hinder the growth of industrial CHP: first, the gap between the fuel costs for central power generation and for CHP; second, the negative attitude of the electric utility(ies).