Decarbonization post-COVID

EnergyNest is in the business of tackling the hardest emissions: decarbonizing heat from heavy industry. It is an increasingly ‘hot topic’ (pardon the pun) on the decarbonization agenda, but for us, it is by no means a recent thought. We’ve been in this business for a few years now, and believe we must be at the forefront of a post-COVID-19 economic recovery.

There’s no denying COVID-19 has caused huge shifts in the energy industry, and it’s quite a mixed picture: rise in renewables, volatility in power markets, and talk of peak oil demand. In this environment, our company’s ability to be agile has paid off. Last week, we finalized stages of production for our Thermal Battery system for Eni (see video below), completing the Heatcrete casting process before being shipped to site in Sicily. In April, we conducted a virtual site visit with ArcelorMittal subsidiary Industeel to talk about ways to reduce their carbon footprint from their production processes at their plant in Charleroi (Belgium).

These are two (of many) companies thinking hard about how they can decarbonize their need for heat. In the case of another of our clients; Austrian brick manufacturer Senftenbacher, we will use our technology to turn waste heat into usable energy input for their production processes. My point is, Thermal Batteries can be an important tool for reducing emissions in hard-to-abate industrial sectors, tackling the underutilization of energy that is common in all industrial processes. You may have heard the anecdote that if the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world. We want to help that ‘country’ reduce its emissions just as much as every other country in the world.

 And it doesn’t have to be high-tech or costly, either. There’s something to be said for applying simple solutions to 21st-century problems. The benefit of our Thermal Batteries is that they save money as well as carbon emissions. We know the task of meeting climate targets is hardest for those in heavy industries and that’s why they need simple, cost-effective technologies like ours to help them get there. Though pioneering, we don’t want the cases of ArcelorMittal, Eni and Senftenbacher do be ‘one of a kind’: we want them to pave the way for a wave of decarbonization projects across European industry.

 Our customers are evaluating what it takes to be future proof, and COVID-19 doesn’t change that. I’m excited for what the future will bring.