Last month, our Cleantech Analyst, Antoine Koen, joined Thermal Energy Day in Budapest, organized by Kyoto to advance the discussion on thermal energy storage for industrial heat.
In his presentation, Antoine provided an overview of the industrial heat demand landscape, highlighting energy use and emissions across a variety of sectors. Some key takeaways of the event included:
- Heat is an essential input for industry and spans a wide range of temperatures, from under 100°C to well beyond 1000°C. Fossil fuel combustion is the norm today.
- While various sectors differ (e.g. plant size, process temperature), electrifying is overall a technologically feasible path to decarbonization; economics are the main bottleneck, with electricity costs usually 2-3 times higher than natural gas across most of Europe and industries being sensitive to the cost of energy.
- Thermal energy storage is an up-and-coming option that can mitigate this by charging from the grid at off-peak hours, which is cheaper both for the plant and for the energy system as a whole.
This high-level perspective was followed up with a very tangible example of thermal storage deployment in a commercial setting, with an on-site visit the next day to KALL, a Hungarian agro-processing plant, for the inauguration of startup Kyoto’s first commercial Heatcube unit. This project marks a major milestone: it is subsidy-free (operating under a “heat-as-a-service” contract) and a key step toward proving and de-risking thermal energy storage technology, sending a strong signal to the market.
A big thank you to Kyoto for the invitation! As Antoine said at the end of his presentation: now is the time to build.
You can find Antoine’s presentation in this video at 1:55:39.