|
WASHINGTON, DC, US, September 6, 2006 (Refocus
Weekly)
The cogeneration industry should use Renewable
Portfolio Standards as a policy tool to advance the industry,
suggests the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.
“Although many states have been making notable progress on
combined heat & power policies, significant barriers continue to
hinder the realization of CHP’s nationwide potential,” explains
ACEEE in ‘Combined Heat & Power: Connecting the Gap between Markets
& Utility Interconnection and Tariff Practices.’ “In particular,
individual utility policies and practices, especially relating to
interconnection and tariffs, have long been identified by ACEEE and
others as a major barrier to the expanded adoption of CHP.”
The report examines utility policies across the U.S. relating to
cogeneration and distributed generation, to identify utility
barriers to entry for proposed CHP facilities. It also identifies
current CHP policies on a state-by-state and regional basis, and
highlights “the most appropriate policy options that might help the
CHP industry move forward.”
The first part of the report focused on utilities in 15 states and
identified some of the main barriers to new projects including
interconnection, tariff rates, safety issues, spark spread, utility
awareness of CHP benefits, and disincentives for utilities caused by
utility regulation. This second part focuses on the remaining
states, and provides national and regional perspectives.
A renewable portfolio standard is a market-driven policy to require
that a minimum amount of green power is included in the portfolio of
electricity resources within an area, it explains. The concept “has
been evolving for many years, with legislation having been
introduced for over a decade at the national level and, to date, 20
states and Washington DC have implemented minimum renewable energy
standards.”
“Recently, we have seen a few instances where either existing or
proposed RPS’s have included CHP and energy efficiency as qualifying
under the standard,” noting that Pennsylvania, Connecticut and
Hawaii are examples of states with RPS’s that include CHP.
“This trend could be a valuable opportunity for encouraging further
integration of CHP into the market and market-driven policy,” the
report notes. “The CHP community should pay close attention as to
how to best use this as a policy tool to move the CHP industry
forward.”
Click
here for more info...
Visit http://www.sparksdata.co.uk/refocus/
for your international energy focus!!
Refocus © Copyright 2005, Elsevier
Ltd, All rights reserved.
|
