POWER February 2015 - 26

COMBINED HEAT AND POWER
fuels, and decentralized systems replace
larger plants. Technological advances-such
as improvements in fuel cells-also promise
fundamental changes in CHP's role over the
coming decades.
Europe
The EU's cogeneration initiative has included
independent assessments of progress known
as CODE, or Cogeneration Observatory and
Dissemination Europe. The first CODE,
completed in 2011, and CODE2, completed
this past December, included country-level
reports on progress toward greater use of
CHP. The picture drawn by these reports suggests
some progress as well as some interesting
developments.
When it comes to penetration of CHP and
DH into the energy market, few regions can
match the countries around the Baltic Sea.
According to trade association EuroHeat &
Power, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia,
and Finland all serve better than 50% of
their populations with DH, with Poland and
Sweden topping 40% and Russia more than
30%. While Germany, with its large population,
serves a smaller fraction of its populace,
its DH system is one of the largest in
Europe. (Iceland leads the world in serving
92% of its population with DH, but the large
majority of it is supplied by geothermal energy
rather than CHP.)
Russia. Russia relies extensively on CHP,
with more than 500 cogeneration plants
in operation and a total capacity of about
50 GW, according to IEA data. In terms of
sheer size of DH networks, none can match
its mammoth system, which is the largest in
the world. But Russia's huge DH network-
which gets about 30% of its heat from largescale
CHP and the balance from boilers and
distributed resources-is also the oldest, with
some elements of it more than 100 years old.
According to the IEA, as much as 60% of the
network needs major repairs or replacement,
and around 20% to 30% of the heat is lost
during transmission.
Russia's CHP system heavily reflects its
Soviet-era history, with about half its CHP
plants serving both industrial and DH needs
as part of centrally planned industrial and
residential projects. CHP in European Russia
uses natural gas overwhelmingly, relying on
the extensive gas infrastructure built to supply
industry and the export market. Eastern
Russia, with far lower population density and
far less infrastructure, relies almost entirely
on coal for CHP.
Though recent data is limited, observers
suggest CHP in Russia is handicapped by
a lack of government focus, artificially low
retail rates, and policies that make distributed
CHP resources more economical, all of
26
1. CHP afloat. Russia is developing a series of floating nuclear plants that will be able to supply
both heat and power to remote areas. The plant design leverages Russia's long experience with
nuclear-powered icebreakers. The first unit, the Akademik Lomonosov under construction in St. Petersburg,
is scheduled for service in 2016. Courtesy: Agustin Alapont Castilla
which limit resources available for upkeep of
the major systems.
Perhaps the most interesting development
in Russia is the plan for mobile, nuclearpowered
CHP in the form of floating nuclear
plants. The 70-MW Akademik Lomonosov
project, scheduled for completion in 2016
and slated for operations in the Russian Far
East, will be able to supply heat and seawater
desalination in addition to electricity (Figure
1). Additional units are in development but
not yet under construction.
Finland. Just over the border in Finland,
it's a different story. CHP supplies about
36% of the nation's overall electricity generation
and about 70% of its DH. Roughly
40% of its CHP capacity serves industrial
needs, with the rest serving the DH networks
and commercial demand. Renewable sources,
mainly biomass and solid waste, provide
about 20% of CHP heat demand and 45%
of electricity demand. Finland's limited energy
resources-it imports about 47% of its
total energy needs and 20% of its electricity-have
led to a national focus on energy
efficiency, which has naturally made CHP
attractive. A favorable, transparent policy
regime-CHP plants get a 50% reduction in
their carbon tax-has also spurred the development
of CHP.
But the success of CHP in Finland
has been such that penetration may have
reached a ceiling. Urban areas are already
supplied overwhelmingly with DH: the capital,
Helsinki, gets 93% of its heating needs
from DH. Industrial CHP is also widely employed
because of the prominence of Finwww.powermag.com
land's
forestry, paper, and pulp sector (its
industrial CHP capacity is fueled about 75%
by biomass). Room for further industrial use
is quite limited.
In addition, a drive to increase nuclear
capacity is providing competition for power
generation, and a need to reduce carbon
emissions is placing pressure on fossil-fueled
CHP plants. As a result, the CHP sector in
Finland has been evolving toward lower
emissions. The DH sector has dramatically
reduced its reliance on coal and fuel oil, and
increased the use of gas and biomass, while
the industrial sector has almost completely
eliminated the use of coal.
Still, the prevalence of CHP in Finland
has meant some interesting technological
advances. The Kymijärvi II gasification
and CHP plant (shown in the header photo),
which went online in 2012 in Lahti, about
100 km north of Helsinki, is the world's first
gasification plant to run exclusively on solid
waste. Rather than incinerating its fuel like a
traditional solid waste plant, the plant uses a
circulating fluidized bed (CFB) gasification
system to produce syngas, which is cleaned
and burned in a boiler. It supplies 50 MW of
electricity to the grid and 90 MW of heat to
the local DH network.
Jointly developed by Lahti Energy, the local
utility, and Valmet, with the CFB gasifier,
boiler, and emissions controls supplied by
Metso, the plant annually consumes about
250 million metric tons of post-consumer
and post-industrial wood, plastic, and paper
materials that cannot be recycled. The use
of CFB gasification technology allows the
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POWER February 2015

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