COGENERATION CHANNEL’s Post

Transcript

���Is CHP deployment fostered by support schemes or programmes in the Midwest and Central states? Yes, I would say so. In the Midwest, along with many other regions of the country, there are clean energy plans that were passed legislatively. And in those, there are aggressive energy targets and there are ways that CHP can fit in them, whether it's fossil fuel at CHP, renewable CHP. An example is Illinois. Illinois has a plan to reach decarbonisation by 2045 and there are mandates for the utilities to participate. So the utilities have energy efficiency programmes that are supporting energy efficiency goals. There are incentives up to $0.18 per kWh and some utilities such as Nicor Gas, they provide free feasibility studies, so an entity looking for CHP can get a free feasibility study from them. Other utilities, such as Ameren Illinois, are actively going out and helping customers look at CHP and in the region as well, the Department of Energy has deployed these Regional CHP Technical Assistance Partnerships. And these partnerships are out there to provide no-cost services and support to any entity or client that's looking to evaluate CHP at their facility. How do you think the CHP market will evolve in the near future in this area? Good question. So I believe the market in the Midwest for CHP will evolve in several ways. There's a large manufacturing base in the Midwest region, 25% of the manufacturing sector is located in the Midwest region. So you have a lot of facilities with large thermal energy uses, electricity uses and that's a prime candidate for CHP. Those are energy-intensive industries. I also believe that micro CHP, smaller CHP systems will have an opportunity. You also have many wastewater treatment plants using biogas ��� there���s opportunities for CHP and even greenhouses, I think there's going to be many applications there. So there are a lot of large energy-intensive users in the region that will be opportunities for CHP. And then also looking at this, it's the decarbonisation sector, looking at decarbonisation and many entities are very interested in their carbon footprint, what are the emissions that they are producing? CHP can be a way of reducing emissions, but you have to calculate that. You have to look at how as a facility, if you're using CHP, are you reducing emissions from the grid and from how your boiler is using thermal energy, calculating that and, in the future, I believe there has to be a uniform calculation methodology that can cover that, that can help the entire sector figure out how true emission savings are being calculated.