Breweries and other industrial facilities that require low-temperature sources of heat could slash energy use and emissions by switching to heat pumps or other efficient electric heating sources.
Industry is often seen as one of the hardest sectors of the economy to decarbonise. One reason is that lots of industrial processes require very high temperatures that are expensive to achieve without burning fossil fuels. Making cement, for instance, requires heating limestone above 1500掳C; steel furnaces require even higher temperatures.
But not all industries run so hot. Around a third of the heated industrial processes in the US , according to a 2022 analysis by at Energy Innovation, a research organisation in California. Collectively, these low-temperature processes are responsible for around 3 per cent of total US annual emissions 鈥� the equivalent of 37 million gasoline-powered cars on the road.
Advertisement
Such temperatures could be supplied by industrial heat pumps, electric boilers and other existing technology, says Rissman.听鈥淚t鈥檚 a real commercial technology that is sold today,鈥� he says. He found that supplying low-temperature heat with such technologies would lead to a 16 per cent reduction in total emissions from US industry by 2050.
Industries that involve lots of low-temperature processes include papermaking and wood processing, chemical refining, glass, dairy and other types of food and beverage production 鈥� including brewing beer.
鈥淲hen people think about heat pumps, they might think about heating buildings, but not beer,鈥� says at the Regulatory Assistance Project, a global energy research non-profit.
But as with other low-temperature industries, using heat pumps for brewing could lead to big energy savings. A recent study from Global Efficiency Intelligence, a research firm in Florida, looked at how low-temperature heat is used in both the beer brewing and glass container industries in several US states. It found that supplying this heat with electric heat pumps would allow both industries to .
While sales of residential heat pumps have boomed in recent years, industrial heat pumps are still not very widespread. Rissman says this is in part because of the cost and complexity involved in replacing industrial heating sources, especially if that process requires a factory to stop production for any amount of time.
But industrial heat pumps are slowly catching on, helped by energy efficiency policies and by volatile gas prices following Russia鈥檚 invasion of Ukraine, says at Imperial College London. 鈥淲hat didn鈥檛 seem like a good economic idea last year now seems like a good idea.鈥�
For instance, Rosenow recently around the world starting to use heat pumps and other energy saving measures. Examples include that uses a heat pump to recapture waste heat from a brewery and repurpose it to warm homes, and a in Manchester, UK that is installing a network of heat pumps it expects will cut gas use by 45 per cent.
In Colorado, New Belgium Brewing is called AtmosZero to supply steam generated by an air-source heat pump system at temperatures up to 200掳C. , AtmosZero鈥檚 CEO, says one reason industrial heat pumps have struggled to take off is they are too complicated to install. 鈥淣othing can just be copy-pasted into the second facility,鈥� he says.
He says his company鈥檚 system is more self-contained and can supply steam at temperatures used in many different industries, whether in a brewery or a chemical plant. 鈥淏reweries look a lot like other facilities,鈥� he says.
