Virginia's Energy Future Workshop: CHP and Critical Services Charlottesville, Virginia June 28, 2004 Organized by Michael Willingham and John Bigger The workshop was designed to identify key opportunities and obstacles affecting the Commonwealth's energy future, with primary emphasis on assuring a diversified, environmentally responsive and secure energy supply for its citizens. Recent destructive hurricanes, as well as the August 2003 power blackout in the Northeastern United States, have underscored both potential vulnerabilities in the nation's electric power system as well as new thinking about strengthening the electric power infrastructure. Concerns about rising oil prices and natural gas availability have augmented this concern, while the possibility of intentional damage to power systems is forcing planners to focus on new avenues to ensure electricity availability, reliability and security. Previous federally-funded studies have provided an overview of Virginia's considerable technical and market potential for the development of combined heat and power (CHP) systems, including in selected commercial and institutional sectors. Until very recently, CHP penetration has been governed almost exclusively by a complex set of economic, technical, policy and regulatory constraints. However, the recent large-scale power outages cited above, as well as similar events throughout the country, pinpointed a hierarchy of high-priority electricity needs that could well be served by CHP, with commensurate improvements in grid security, reliability and availability. These critical needs include - but are not limited to - emergency operations centers (EOCs), police and fire departments, hospitals and critical care facilities, water treatment facilities, fuel distribution facilities, defense facilities, air traffic control, other transportation controls and cellular service sites. The question posed to workshop participants thus became: "How to promote CHP development to support these critical functions?" The participants were asked to brainstorm toward developing a set of possible options, as well as defining what must be done to realize individual options. These may include providing some form of 'credit' for the thermal portion of CHP systems, incentives for promoting CHP installations, valuing the security/safety aspects of CHP in critical infrastructure security, re-casting CHP as both emergency back-up power and long-term power provider, and moving toward output-based emissions standards. [Back]