Decarbonising high-temperature heat is very challenging. Demand is huge and concentrated in a few places, often not very sunny. The plants were often designed around natural gas. What solutions exist, with what potentials and what costs?

Work by Christian Breyer’s group at LUT University for the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament, in the context of the Renewable Energy Directive revision shows that for a ‘REF’ scenario achieving climate neutrality by 2050, 1000 TWh of industrial heat demand is met largely with industrial heat pumps and bioenergy (Figure 19). Do we agree?