COGEN Europe Recognition Awards 2018 Acknowledge Outstanding Performances and Achievements of Cogeneration Sector

Brussels Environment, EnergieAgentur.NRW, Hanae Chauvaud de Rochefort (The ADE), Cooperativa Agricola Speranza, Turboden - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, as well as Philipp Piddington and Adi Golbach, were honoured by the European cogeneration sector on Tuesday, 5th June, at the 2018 COGEN Europe Recognition Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner, for their contribution to the cogeneration sector through outstanding performance and achievement. They received the award from COGEN Europe’s Managing Director Hans Korteweg and Member of the European Parliament Peter Kouroumbashev (Socialists & Democrats, Bulgaria), member of the Jury of the 2018 edition of the Awards.
 
Due to the very high quality of the nominations, the Jury this year decided to assign two Policy Development Awards.
Leefmilieu Brussel / Bruxelles Environnement won for its supporting mechanism for CHP. Brussels Environment, the administration of Environment and Energy of the Brussels-Capital Region, has recently adjusted the Green Certificate Scheme to take into account the specificities of Brussels region’s buildings (i.e. the relatively low level of self-consumption of the electricity produced locally). This has triggered renovation of many existing (and sometimes aging) buildings and a growth of the small to medium gas-fired CHPs. 
 
A Policy Development Award also went to the Energy Agency of North-Rhine Westphalia. When being handed the Award, Dr. Frank-Michael Baumann, CEO of EnergieAgentur.NRW, Duesseldorf, said: “The COGEN Europe Recognition Award 2018 for the campaign CHP.NRW – Power Meets Heat of the EnergyAgency.NRW is a very important recognition of our activities in the last decade. Our campaign is acting on behalf of the North-Rhine Westphalian Government to publicise this technology and promote its expansion”.
 
Hanae Chauvaud de Rochefort from The Association for Decentralised Energy (The ADE) in the UK, was assigned the Market Development Award for individuals for having developed a simulation model of the UK electricity system enabling the carbon savings from CHP to be empirically analysed for the first time. It reveals that cogeneration will always displace less efficient gas from being a lower marginal cost generator and therefore can deliver price and carbon savings to all energy consumers.
 
The Award for Market Development for organisations went to the Italian Cooperativa Agricola Speranza, for representing the future of CHP as a flexible and dispatchable energy solution. In the words of Piero Gattoni,  President of CIB – Consorzio Italiano Biogas: “Consorzio Italiano Biogas is very proud of the Award assigned to its member Cooperativa Speranza, a farm with biogas plant which built a district heating to heat up the nearby Institute for the Research and Treatment of Cancer. This represents a clear example of high commitment towards the local community with a perfect integration within the territory, moving a step forward in the key role of agriculture in the next future.
 
Turboden - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries won the 2018 Technology & Innovation Award for their recent project in Brønderslev. “Turboden’s project in Brønderslev is a clear example of technological innovation: a 3.8 MWe ORC unit that performs better than expected” – states Marco Baresi, Institutional Affairs & Marketing Director Turboden S.p.A. “This is an interesting example of HYBRID cogeneration system from solid biomass connected to district heating at low temperature 45-55 °C (instead of the traditional 60-80 ° C) associated to a “Concentrated Solar Power system” and heat pumps.
 
Last but not least, Philipp Piddington and Adi Golbach both won the special Lifetime Achievement Award for their career-long commitment towards cogeneration and their instrumental role in achieving important objectives for the whole sector in the course of the last decades.
 
More information on the COGEN Europe Recognition Awards Ceremony and the pictures of the event are available on the website of COGEN Europe’s 2018 Annual Conference “The Power of Heat”.