By Benjamin Zühlsdorf, Innovation Director, PhD, Danish Technological Institute
Industrial heat pumps are recognized in the “Net Zero by 2050 – a roadmap for a global energy transition” by the International Energy Agency as the main technology to be implemented until 2030 to replace fossil fuel boilers. To reach climate targets, 15 % of industrial process heat below 400 °C in light industries should be covered by heat pumps, and achieving this will require a rapid increase in adoption, with an average of 500 MW of installed capacity every month worldwide between 2021 and 2030.
Accelerating industrial heat pump deployment through value chain collaboration
Traditional heat pumps have proven successful in buildings and district heating, but the complexity rises as industrial heat pumps are integrated into industrial processes, and so does the need for collaboration. Bringing together technology providers, system integrators, industrial end users, and research institutions has consistently proven crucial for overcoming technical challenges and accelerating the market readiness of industrial heat pump solutions.
Raising the bar through collaborative research
Funded research and development projects require value chain collaboration as a prerequisite, and this collective approach consistently has led to solutions that are both innovative and practical for industrial needs. In recent years, industry collaboration has significantly raised the bar for industrial heat pumps. The results from IEA HPT Annex 58 High-Temperature Heat Pumps have first and foremost shown that industrial heat pumps are undergoing a rapid development towards supply temperatures well above 100 °C and a variety of applications. The results did, however, also demonstrate that collaborative R&D projects involving the entire value chain have been a key driver behind most of the developments that are successfully transforming the market.
From shared knowledge to large-scale impact
While value chain collaboration is a key enabling factor within individual research projects, it is also important to establish forums for ongoing knowledge exchange. Fortunately, when looking over the landscape of conferences held across the heat pump industry, we see industrial heat pumps gaining more and more attention.
This is something we experience ourselves at the High Temperature Heat Pump (HTHP) Symposium, which is held in Copenhagen every second year. The Symposium became the meeting space for the entire value chain of HTHPs and is bringing academia and industry together. Since its inception in 2017 with around 60 participants, the event has grown to 400 participants in 2024, and expectations for even more in 2026. This remarkable growth reflects the increasing interest in industrial heat pumps and the importance of collaboration and knowledge exchange as the enabler for industrial growth.
Whether the increasing awareness and momentum will be sufficient to meet the ambitious target of 500 MW of new industrial heat pump capacity every month remains to be seen. However, with the launch of the new HPT Project 68 on Industrial High-Temperature Heat Pumps, the IEA’s TCP on Heat Pumping Technologies (HPT TCP) is committed to supporting this agenda and helping the industry move towards large-scale implementation.
