Industrial Heat Pumps in the UK, Current Constraints and Future Possibilities

Industrial heat pumps are not common in the UK. However, there is a large and untapped waste heat energy resource that could be upgraded to useful heat in buildings and industrial processes, but there is confusion as to the amount of this heat that is available. Industrial Heat is approximately 300 TWh/year in 2016 (DUKES – ECUK, 2017) and the available waste Heat = 1/6th available for waste heat recovery (Element Energy, 2014) i.e. 50 TWh/year. If this was used for future district heating networks, 28 TWh/year would be utilised in new networks (Element Energy, 2014). Assuming a current household gas price of 3.69p/kWh (British Gas), the utilisation of 28 TWh/year will displace over £1Bn of gas purchases annually. However, UK industrial electricity prices for large energy users are almost 60% higher than the EU-15 median, while for medium and small/ medium users, the price differential is over 40%. Higher performing heat pumps may provide an answer.