**10.2 Distributed energy applications**

Future trend of energy utilization is in the type of distributed application. There are many limitations for making the system that will be competitive to the centralized big-scale system that has a huge advantage in the economics of scale.

Nevertheless, the preference for the distributed energy system that is more suitable in effectively responding to the local energy demand is on the increase worldwide recently over centralized energy distribution systems. Distributed energy system market is expected to steadily expand, and this trend is most significant in the field of less than 50 MW output, where the gas turbine is taking large proportion of market share. Alcohol fuel is also expected to play a significantly important role in the distributed energy system market (**Figure 14**).

Locally produced biomass, wastes, and agricultural by-products are converted to alcohol fuels for energy sources, and they are locally distributable and consumed. Such system is cost-competitive by minimizing the transportation distance and is important as the basic infrastructure in securing the clean energy source as well as in proceeding to the sustainable society. However, the distributed energy application system costs more than the centralized energy distribution system, in general. It can be accomplished only by meeting the pre-conditions that cost should be down significantly and proper commercialization with reliable technologies should be available for greenhouse gas reduction and for alleviation of environmental pollution.
