The book gives a comprehensive overview of technologies for decentralised power generation (DG technologies), including those based on both renewable energy sources (RES), and on combined heat and power (CHP) technologies, and of relevant policies of the EU and its Member States. Special attention is paid to barriers to implementation and success factors that were drawn from 24 case studies carried out throughout the EU. Furthermore, the book offers policy recommendations regarding how to move towards a level playing field for DG technologies. Additionally, the analysis is founded on the results of a study for future developments in European DG technologies and likely scenarios for the role of DG in the future.

In the coming 20 years, decentralised generation (DG) is expected to play an in- creasingly important role in the European electricity infrastructure and market. DG can be defined as small-scale generation connected to the distribution network or on the customer side of the meter. The application of DG is often highly loca- tion specific and depends on such diverse issues as the possibilities of technical implementation, resource availability, environmental aspects, social embedding of the project, regulation and market conditions. These factors vary considerably among technologies and among the ED Member States. The DECENT study (Decentralised Generation Technologies -Potentials, Suc- cess Factors and Impacts in the Liberalised ED Energy Markets (Joerss et al. 2002" was designed and carried out to identify the main barriers and success fac- tors to the implementation of DG projects within the ED and to formulate a num- ber of related recommendations to ED and Member State policy makers to en- hance the feasibility of DG projects within the internal energy market.