Welcome to Heat Pumping Technologies Magazine – Issue 3, 2025
Welcome to this issue, where we turn our focus to one of the most critical frontiers in the energy transition: the electrification and decarbonisation of industrial process heat. This issue spotlights the rapidly evolving role of high-temperature heat pumps in industrial applications, examining how technological innovation is pushing performance boundaries and enabling solutions once considered out of reach.
Industry accounts for a substantial share of global final energy demand, with process heat representing the dominant portion of this consumption. While low- and medium-temperature applications have already seen significant uptake of heat pump technology, delivering reliable, efficient, and cost-effective heat at temperatures above 100 °C remains a central challenge. At the same time, it represents one of the greatest opportunities for reducing fossil fuel dependency and industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Against this backdrop, this issue explores how advances in refrigerants, system architectures, digital design methods, and integration concepts are accelerating the deployment of high-temperature heat pumps across diverse industrial sectors.
The Foreword, titled “Industrial heat pumps – Pushing the boundaries to revolutionize industries”, sets the stage by reflecting on the strategic importance of industrial heat pumps in meeting climate and competitiveness goals. It highlights the need to move beyond incremental improvements and embrace system-level innovation, new operating paradigms, and closer integration with industrial processes.
In the Column, “Accelerating the Heat Pump Revolution: From Vision to Industrial Reality”, the discussion shifts from ambition to implementation. The column addresses how policy frameworks, market conditions, and technological readiness must align to move high-temperature heat pumps from pilot projects to mainstream industrial solutions, emphasizing the importance of scalability, bankability, and industrial confidence.
The Topical Articles in this issue provide in-depth technical insights into key enablers for industrial heat pump deployment. Contributions examine refrigerant screening and advanced cycle configurations for high-temperature applications, automated and data-driven approaches to system design and integration, and innovative system concepts capable of overcoming large temperature lifts. Together, these articles illustrate how both fundamental thermodynamic research and applied engineering are converging to unlock new industrial use cases for heat pumps.
Complementing the topical content, this issue also includes a Non-Topical Article exploring AI-driven predictive control strategies for energy-intensive systems, highlighting how digitalisation and intelligent control can further enhance efficiency and operational performance in complex thermal systems.
In the National Market section, we spotlight Sweden with an exclusive Heat Pump Market Report. The Swedish market offers valuable insights into how strong policy support, industrial innovation, and system-integration expertise can create favourable conditions for the adoption of advanced heat pump technologies, including emerging industrial applications.
Taken together, Issue 3/2025 presents a comprehensive view of how high-temperature heat pumps are transitioning from niche solutions to core components of industrial energy systems. We hope this edition informs, inspires, and supports stakeholders across industry, research, and policy as they work to accelerate the deployment of heat pumps and advance the global transition toward sustainable industrial heat.
Enjoy your reading!
Dr Metkel Yebiyo, Editor
Heat Pump Centre
The central communication activity of the Technology Collaboration Programme on Heat Pumping Technologies (HPT TCP)
Contact: metkel.yebiyo@ri.se
