High Efficiency Cogeneration: Performance Assessment of Industrial Cogeneration Power Plants

In 2004, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted the Directive 2004/8 EC whose purpose is to increase energy efficiency and develop high efficiency cogeneration of heat and power. Italy brought into force this law by means of the Legislative Decree February 8, 2007, n. 20: from January 1, 2011, the high efficiency cogeneration is the cogeneration that meets the requirements of Directive 2004/8/EC. Then, Italy adopted two ministerial decrees: the ministerial decree of Environment Ministry (August 4, 2011), that integrates the Decree n.20, and the ministerial decree of Ministry of Economic Development (September 5, 2011), that lays down the conditions and procedures for access to the support system of cogeneration: for each year in which the requirements of high efficiency cogeneration are met, the cogeneration units are entitled to energy efficiency certificates (White Certificates), whose number is proportional to the energy saving achieved. Therefore, from January 1, 2011 the legislative and incentive cogeneration context is radically changed and, consequently, new boundary conditions must be taken into account for feasibility studies and performance assessments of cogeneration plants. So, in this paper we want to evaluate the impact of this new legislative context on the competitiveness of the various cogeneration technologies. To this end, after an illustration of the new criteria to meet the qualifications of the high efficiency cogeneration, a comparison between different generation technologies will be developed by highlighting the impact of the new incentive context.