Legislative regulations in favor of combined heat and power (CHP) production have been implemented in many countries. Although these regulations put different emphasis on power production vs. process heat production, they are based on energy quantities and not on exergy. In order to analyze and compare the exergetic consequences of the various legislations, a relative avoided irreversibility (RAI) is defined. This can be regarded as the exergy loss that is avoided when reference plants with separate production are replaced by an actual CHP plant. Some series of industrial and district heating CHP plants, under varying operational conditions, are used as test cases. It is seen that some, but not all, CHP cases are exergetically beneficial to separate generation. Comparison with the RAI allows a quantitative assessment of the various performance indicators. It is seen that exergetic improvements were only captured to a limited degree by the various energy-based efficiency indicators. Some legislatively defined indicators even appear to discourage thermodynamic improvements. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.