To increase awareness about clean energy solutions for the nation, the U.S. Department of Energy's Industrial Technologies Program (ITP) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently released Combined Heat and Power: Effective Energy Solutions for a Sustainable Future (PDF 2.5 MB). This comprehensive report highlights combined heat and power (CHP) as a realistic solution to enhance energy efficiency, ensure environmental quality, promote economic growth, and foster a robust energy infrastructure in the United States. It also discusses current opportunities and challenges to widespread national CHP deployment, and sets the stage for future policy dialogue aimed at promoting this clean energy solution.
The report answers the question: "What if 20 percent of U.S. generating capacity came from CHP?" and presents technology, market, and policy options to achieve this goal by 2030. If this goal were met, projected benefits would include:
- A 60 percent reduction of the projected increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030 – the equivalent of removing 154 million cars from the road
- Fuel savings of 5.3 quadrillion Btu annually – the equivalent of nearly half the total energy currently consumed by U.S. households
- Economically viable application throughout the nation in large and small industrial facilities, commercial buildings, multi-family and single-family housing, institutional facilities, and campuses
- Creation of 1 million new highly-skilled, competitive "green-collar" jobs through 2030
- Approximately $234 billion in new investments throughout the United States.
Combined heat and power, also known as cogeneration, is the concurrent production and use of electricity or mechanical power and thermal energy. CHP includes a suite of technologies that can use a variety of fuels to generate electricity or power at the point of use, allowing normally lost heat to be recovered to provide needed heating or cooling. Using CHP today, the United States already avoids more than 1.9 quadrillion Btu of fuel consumption and annual CO2 emissions – equivalent to removing more than 45 million cars from the road.
The report is a joint effort between ITP and ORNL with substantial input and review by a range of industry, association, and non-governmental stakeholders. To view the report and to learn more about ITP's CHP activities, visit the Industrial Distributed Energy Web site.
Potential Savings of 20% of CHP Generation capacity by 2030
240 Gigawatts (equal to 200-300 coal-fired power plants)
5 quadrillion Btu of energy savings
848 million metric tons of annual CO2 emissions reduction
