The Engineer-Poet recently had a post on The Cogeneration
Stopgap at the Oil Drum, which looked at how the combination of
cogeneration (generating combined heat and power - CHP - using
natural gas) and heat pumps could be used to heat North American
homes much more efficiently and extend the life of North
America's dwindling natural gas reserves for a period of time
while houses are retrofitted to make them more energy efficient
and natural gas use is replaced with electricity. The only
example of cogeneration technology touched on in the article was
from Climate Energy, whose CHP unit is made by Honda. An
Australian company working in this area called Ceramic Fuel
Cells were in the news recently after landing a $240 million
deal with Dutch energy company Nuon to supply 50,000 CHP units
by 2014. The company still needs to meet a number of commercial
requirements set by Nuon - in particular improving the
durability of the cells from two years to four. The company is
hoping that production will begin by June 20