Cogeneration Systems for Sustainable Energy: Economic, Environmental Perspectives, Challenges, and Innovations – A Review

Combined Heat and Power (CHP) has emerged as one of the most innovative applications toward maximizing energy efficiency by converting a single source of fuel into both electricity and heat. This literature review examines the development, economic feasibility, environmental effects, and integration issues involved in cogeneration systems. Cogeneration systems are widely applied in industrial, commercial, and residential settings and offer a huge potential for saving energy and costs while being environmentally sustainable. However, existing models have a number of limitations and challenges such as high upfront investment costs, regulatory hurdles, technical difficulties in grid integration, and inefficiencies in accommodating variable renewable energy inputs. In addition, the issue of lack of standardization across systems, maintenance complexities, and scalability of technologies for smaller applications is critical issues. The review is conducted based on the latest developments, arising issues, and integration of renewable energy about the role that CHP systems are going to play in the future perspective of smart grids and decentralized energy production. Through case studies, real-world implementation, showing the practicality, and highlighting this tendency toward benefits obtained from applying systems within different sectors. Finally, the discussion deals with emerging innovations and optimization techniques to maximize economic and environmental value of cogeneration technologies in urban and rural energy systems while solving some of the major limitations and challenges of existing models.