Few states building steam on combined heat and power

有lot of coverage in GreenBiz lately about the挑战,企业面对带来综合发热和电力（CHP）设施online.

Areport released today from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE)finds that, unfortunately, most states lack the policies and regulations necessary to help businesses move forward on CHP projects. If we are ever to meetPresident Obama’s goal of bringing 40 GW of new CHPonline by 2020, states have a lot of work to do.

For those who are unfamiliar with how CHP works, think of it like a mini power plant (“mini” is a relative term, as these facilities can generate hundreds of MW of power) located onsite at industries and institutions that provide electricity and recapture waste heat from power production for use in a variety of ways – from fueling industrial processes to heating interior spaces or water used in buildings. Having onsite CHP greatly reduces the amount of electricity that businesses and institutions have to buy from utilities. Plus, companies that own and operate their own power supply are less likely to be exposed to power outages and volatility in energy markets.

This year’s状态能效记分卡- Aceee对各国对推进能源效率的进展的年度排名 - 发现只有四个州筹集了额外一半以上的CHP政策和条例。

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Massachusetts, Ohio, Connecticut and New Jersey are leading the charge on CHP. Most other states are lagging. In fact, a full 40 states and the District of Columbia scored than two points or less out of five available on CHP readiness this year.

Why should this concern the business community? Because it is these very policies, programs and incentives that help pave the way for businesses to take advantage of CHP and accelerate its market adoption. There are multiple ways in which states can actively encourage or discourage the deployment of CHP. Financial, technical, policy and regulatory factors all impact the extent to which CHP is deployed.

For this year’s State Energy Efficiency Scorecard report, we evaluated states’ progress on adopting the following policies, regulations and incentives that would help advance CHP:

1. Interconnection standardsthat establish parameters and procedures for CHP projects big and small connect to the grid
2. Allowing CHP projects to count toward a state’sRenewable Portfolio Standard要么Energy Efficiency Resource Standard
3. 财政奖励对于单次纪次支付，基于项目的拨款或税收激励等杂志项目
4. Net meteringwhich allows small CHP project owners to get credit for the excess electricity that they produce on site
5. Adopting基于产出的排放法规通过使用单一燃料来源产生电力和热能的CHP系统，确认“双爆炸率”实现，大大减少了发出的空气污染量
6. Otherfinancial assistance为了帮助CHP项目向前推出，如低利息贷款，贷款保证和可用的债券机构
7. Additional CHP-friendly policies such astechnical assistance和education campaigns

德州提供了一个很好的例子，即如何开发出基于输出的排放法规，以帮助消除障碍部署的障碍。德克萨斯州的新允许流程提供了一定的合格CHP系统，速度批准过程 - 估计四到六周，而不是前一年的过程。通过降低与获取适当许可相关的成本和时间，这一新进程有望帮助增加已经在2010-2010州安装的61兆瓦的61兆瓦的CHP容量。

Ohio is also helping businesses move forward on CHP by partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy to offer technical assistance to companies with older boilers that will be impacted by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency clean air regulations. The state is also hosting conversations with utilities about how to make supplemental and backup power rates fair for CHP installations connected to the grid. The state’s CHP-friendly stance has helped put more than 57 MW of CHP online in 2010-2011.

Not only can CHP be a more reliable power source for many businesses, it is also a much cleaner and more efficient way to generate power than traditional utility-scale power plants. Producing power onsite eliminates the energy loss associated with transmitting electrons from remote power plants to individual customers. CHP can generate power at combined electrical and thermal efficiencies of up to 85% while the average delivered efficiency of utility-scale electric power plants is about 33%. Most CHP facilities are powered using natural gas, a much cleaner burning fuel than coal, which makes up 54 percent of the total fuel supply used by utilities to generate electricity. In fact, utilities could help clean up their own acts with CHP. Arecent ACEEE report发现，可以通过在客户网站上的CHP项目来满足弥补旧的旧燃烧电厂所需的大部分电力发电能力。

CHP is an energy-efficient, clean and reliable ways to power many of our industries, commercial facilities and large institutions. We need more business leaders to urge state officials to pursue CHP-friendly policies and regulations to help this resource take off and meet the President’s goal.