Co-generation in Europe. Future Prospects.
 

David Lawrence, President of Euroheat, highlighted the importance of an EU Strategy for the future development of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and District Heating and Cooling (DHC) in Europe. He fully supported the Commission's views on setting an ambitious target for the development of CHP (doubling the share of cogenerated electricity from 9% today to 18% in 2010), on the necessity to monitor carefully the impact of the liberalisation of the energy markets on CHP/DHC, on the need to internalise external costs in the prices of all sources of energy and on the importance to continue and strengthen the effort on technology development.

He emphasised however that more needs to be done to ensure a fair competition, or 'level playing field', between the various energy sources. In this respect, he considered that the Commission's energy tax proposal and the directives on boiler emission standards are not satisfactory.

In his conclusion, Mr. Lawrence asked for a review of the Strategy within two years and offered EuroHeat to become an active partner of the EU in this process.

In the debate that followed, David Lawrence had the opportunity to position District Heating (DH) in a competing market giving the example of an efficient and entirely privately financed DH grid in Sheffield where gas distribution networks had been long established. He underlined that the main parameter for DH to be competitive depended on an adequate development strategy.

The importance of a strategy was illustrated by one of the participants who emphasised the need to consider CHP at the design stage when planning new industrial or housing estates and to therefore make architects and town planners aware of this type of energy supply.

To a question put by Mrs Estevan Bolea, rapporteur on the Strategy Paper, on the scope for development of CHP, Mr Lawrence replied that the UK was one of the EU countries with the best potential because of its densely-populated areas and high urbanisation. As far as CHP technology itself is concerned, it can be considered to be very adaptable. However technology can be enhanced: progress can still be made on the CHP engines and on district cooling equipment hence justifying further R&D.

The origin of the Strategy Paper was presented by Mr Dalamangas, from DG XVII at the European Commission. He explained that in the White Paper "An Energy Policy for the European Union", the Commission committed itself to present a strategy offering a coherent approach for the promotion of CHP in the EU. He believed that the presentation of this strategy was particularly timely: the EU having signed the Kyoto agreement which implies a reduction of 8% of greenhouse gases by 2010, it now has to envisage all the available solutions to reach this target. In this context, CHP has a major role to play.

When asked why the Commission had not been more ambitious in defining its Paper, he explained that doubling the share of electricity production by CHP involves not only doubling the existing installed capacity in the EU but also increasing the load factor for CHP installations by 30%. These are ambitious but still realistic targets. The proposed strategy represents an important first step which is expected to be followed by others in due time.

The debate demonstrated that the full potential of CHP/DHC is not always fully appreciated and that EuroHeat will need to increase its efforts to improve information and communication.

www.europeanenergyforum.eu/archives/european-energy-forum/energy-management-and-policy/a-european-cogeneration-strategy

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