The 80% efficiency seen in combined heat and power plants, known as cogeneration plants, is ideally suited for large institutions--universities, hospitals, airports--that have extensive electricity and thermal energy demand in a concentrated area.

FORBES: Magazine Article

We're also working to make sure that we can start turning things like plants and woodchips into heat, power, and biofuels, and that will create new economic opportunities for rural communities.

WHITEHOUSE: Meeting with Governors on Energy Policy

Tellingly, about two-thirds of bids for solar energy contracts last year (by electricity generated) were for photovoltaic projects and only a third were for solar thermal power plants, which deploy vast arrays of mirrors to heat liquids and produce steam to drive an electricity-generating turbine.

FORBES: California Reveals Price It Pays For Renewable Energy

As small heat-and-power units spread to homes and offices, the inefficiency of dirty coal-fired power plants would be exposed.

ECONOMIST: Stepping on the gas

This is the current of water that takes enormous amounts of heat about as much as would be generated by a million nuclear power plants from the tropics and carries it to eastern North America and western Europe.

ECONOMIST: A meltdown tinged with acid