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Currently around 10% of electricity demand in the EU is accounted for by CHP. In Ireland, however, we are currently generating only 2.4% of our electricity from CHP. The European Commission has targeted CHP to produce 18% of electricity by 2010. In certain countries such as the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark, CHP supplies are more than 30% of electricity requirements already. At 2.4% Ireland's percentage of electricity produced by CHP is now ranked last amongst the EU countries. In contrast, Denmark has secured first place with over 50% of its' total electricity generated by CHP.

The total installed capacity of CHP in Ireland at the end of 2002 was 131.5 MWe. In 2002 the bulk of installed capacity - over 82% or 108MWe - was in the industrial sector. However, most of the actual installations are in the services sector - hotels, leisure centres, hospitals, universities etc. In October 2000 the National Climate Change Strategy was published, which aims to avoid the emissions of 0.25 million tonnes of CO₂ through the use of CHP by the year 2010. The average growth during the last years has been too low to meet the targets set up in the National Climate change Strategy, which approximately require 25 MWe new CHP capacity per year.