COGEN Europe, the association that promotes heat and power cogeneration in Europe, set out a series of recommendations on Friday 21 April, in response to the clean energy package, to unlock the potential of cogeneration in the transition to sustainable energy.
COGEN Europe argues for an integrated approach to energy and climate policy and calls for the silos between energy conversion, transmission, distribution and consumption and unlocking synergies between different energy carriers and grids (electricity, heat, gas) to be broken down. For the cogeneration sector, unlocking the significant untapped energy efficiency potential at supply side level will be key to delivering the 2030 objectives.
The association calls for a robust and transparent methodology that will allow consumers and investors to compare energy savings across all parts of the economy and sectors, from supply to demand, and take informed decisions to achieve real efficiency gains. Policy signals need to reflect the losses and inefficiencies in today’s energy system, across all energy carriers (i.e. electricity, heat, gas networks) and reflect when and how heat and electricity is used and produced, it stresses.
The cogeneration sector also argues for the acquis of the 2012 energy efficiency directive to be strengthened and applied consistently to ensure efficient, secure, sustainable and cost-effective supply of both electricity and heat for European consumers, thus allowing for the specific needs of domestic, commercial, public and industrial consumers to be fully addressed.
COGEN Europe says, too, that the “often forgotten” challenge of sustainable, secure and cost-effective heat supply must be addressed by reinforcing systematic and comprehensive planning and implementation of efficient heating and cooling solutions. To promote renewable heat, as well as flexible low and no-carbon electricity generation, a balanced approach should be taken to incentivising the efficient use of bioenergy resources with cogeneration.
Lastly, COGEN Europe calls for the diverse needs of all energy consumers to be addressed in order to produce their own heat and electricity efficiently, while enabling them to unlock all available flexibility opportunities (e.g. demand response, heat and/or electricity storage, balancing services, aggregation of either demand or supply). It is equally important, it states, to ensure a continued business case for existing sustainable energy investments, including for cogeneration.
“Being consumer-led and using a range of conventional and renewable fuels, cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP), engages consumers and makes consumers active beneficiaries of the energy transition. Cogeneration thus helps deliver on the objectives of the Clean Energy Package by saving energy, reducing CO2 emissions and enabling more renewable heat and electricity in the system, while ensuring grid stability”, COGEN Europe states. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)