The president of ACOGEN, Antonio Pérez Palacio, spoke yesterday at the conference “Energy efficiency as a priority: new measures of the EU and state of Spanish regulations”, organized by the Spanish Energy Club, in which he said that ” Cogeneration is a factor of energy efficiency on the large scale “and that precisely the first European directive that has ever referred to efficiency is the 2004 Cogeneration Directive.
Pérez Palacio said that “understanding energy efficiency in cogeneration is simple: we are high efficiency because we save at least 10% of primary energy in each plant, as defined by European Union directives but, moreover, the Spanish cogeneration fleet saves not only 10%, but 18 % on the sectorial basis “.
In Spain, industry accounts for two-thirds of gas and one third of electricity consumption, a volume that, along with cogeneration, constitutes a huge lever of potential efficiency, says the Association in a statement in which it includes its president´s words. That is why “the size of cogeneration is industrial, we are a factor of efficiency on the large scale, we save up to 2% of the total energy of the country,” said Perez Palacio.
He further explained that cogeneration is the heat of industry because the cogeneration industries need heat in their production process and cogeneration provides it, simultaneously generating the heat and electricity needed to manufacture their products.
An energy efficiency factor
The statement recalls that the European Commission’s legislative proposal “Clean Energy for all Europeans” (Winter Package) proposes a modification of the Energy Efficiency Directive 2012 and sets a binding target for the Union of 30% energy efficiency in 2030.
Perez Palacio stressed that cogeneration, which produces 10% of Europe’s electricity and 15% of heat, is key to achieving the Energy Union targets as “it is the great measure to achieve the prioritization of energy efficiency and targets by 2030 and fits perfectly into the new designs of interconnected energy markets. “
At the national level, the recovery of cogeneration industries is being paramount to regain demand in energy systems, especially natural gas, and to raise energy and decarbonization savings in the industrial economy.
“By the end of 2016 cogeneration grew 3.5%, and the indicators of these first months of 2017 point to 5%, which is very good news for the industry,” said Perez Palacio, recalling that a large part of the achievements in energy efficiency that Spain makes annually go hand in hand with industrial cogeneration.
“We can not step back on the 2020 efficiency and emissions saving goals and we must move steadily towards the 2030 targets,” said the president of ACOGEN, “which are consubstantial with maintaining and enhancing the efficiency of cogeneration and for that to be so it is necessary to develop the mechanisms and frameworks that grant a regulatory horizon that allows to undertake the necessary investments for the continuity of the useful life of the plants”.
