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Southwest Energy Efficiency Project Southwest Energy Efficiency Project

Intermountain Clean Energy Center

The U.S. DOE Intermountain Clean Energy Application Center aims to increase adoption of clean and efficient combined heat and power (CHP), waste heat recovery, and district energy in the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

  • Combined Heat and Power (CHP) refers to generating electricity at or near the place where it is used, and then "recycling" the waste heat and using it for space heating, water heating, process steam for industrial steam loads, humidity control, air conditioning, water cooling, product drying, or for nearly any other thermal energy need. The end result is significantly more efficient than generating cooling, heating, and power separately, and results in far fewer climate change emissions.
  • Waste Heat Recovery captures thermal energy normally wasted from industrial processes or compressor stations, and turns it into electricity, thus using no additional fuel and creating no additional emissions.
  • District Energy involves one of the above options but on a community or campus scale.

These types of clean energy already provide nine percent of our nation's electricity needs, but much of the potential remains untapped. We invite you to explore how CHP, waste heat recovery, and district energy can benefit our region's businesses and communities, and how the U.S. DOE Intermountain Clean Energy Application Center can help with technical assistance, project support, education, policy reform, grant information, and more.

SWEEP has partnered in running the center on behalf of DOE since 2003. Visit SWEEP's Intermountain Clean Energy Center website at www.intermountaincleanenergy.org.

 Intermountain Clean Energy Application Center

SWEEP paper proposes a new method for calculating electricity savings from CHP projects:

Calculating Net Electricity Savings from Utility-Supported CHP Projects
by Neil Kolwey,
Senior Associate
August 2012
(Updated & revised, April 2013)
8 pages; PDF - 518 KB