Exploratory assessment of provisional analysis of cogeneration

Under the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) member states must take steps to improve energy efficiency in order to secure the EU target of a 20% reduction in energy consumption by 2020. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl) is developing a provisional assessment (interim analysis) framework for conducting cost-benefit analysis (cba) of investment programmes in boiler plant with a thermal capacity of over 20 MWth. In this context RVO.nl has asked CE Delft to explore the options for establishing conditions and criteria to serve as input for this provisional analysis.

CE Delft has developed a decision tree distinguishing three basic situations:

• Application of cogeneration is unfeasible or inefficient.
• Application of cogeneration may be efficient, but requires project-specific assessment.
• Application of cogeneration can be assessed by means of a simple calculation indicating whether or not an efficient business case is likely.