CHP dramatically increases power plant efficiency thus reducing fuel costs, carbon emissions, and detriment to the local environment. Implementation of CHP is often driven by reliability requirements for mission critical facilities (such as hospitals, data centers, or research labs), sustainability needs, fuel diversity, and local sources of power generation.
District energy systems are well suited for CHP because they expand the potential thermal load, reduce the requirement for capital investment, and provide economies of scale that enable technologies like thermal energy storage or biomass more economical.