Electric heating
systems

for decarbonisation in the aluminium, steel
and cement industries

Discover the project

Tackling one of Europe’s hardest decarbonisation gaps: high-temperature process heat in energy-intensive industries

Industrial process heating is the single largest energy use in the industrial sector, accounting for 47% of EU industrial energy demand and roughly three-quarters of the CO₂ emissions generated directly by industry in 2018.

Approximately 75% of this energy comes from the combustion of fossil fuels, mainly natural gas, while electricity accounts for only about 4%. Europe’s energy-intensive industries urgently require high-power electrification technologies capable of reliably reaching 900–1,250 °C.

Electrifying high-temperature industrial heat processes offers a pathway to eliminate fossil-fuel burners and fast-track the uptake of net-zero technologies across Europe’s energy-intensive industry (EII) sectors.

EHEAT in numbers

15

partners from 6 different countries

4 years

project duration

90–95%

targeted CO₂ reductions

11 M€

budget

Electric heating

to decarbonise energy-intensive industries

Objective, approach and vision

01

ambition

Prove a modular, certifiable, and economically viable route to electrify furnaces up to ~1,250 °C thanks to a retrofit-ready electrification platform that couples microwave heating of recirculated flue gas.

02

solution & approach

Engineer microwave modules, recirculated flue gas hardware, and microwave-compatible refractories; qualify sensors and controls and integrate them in pilots before industrial demonstrations and replication.

03

Vision

Create a scalable blueprint for near-zero-emission heat in aluminium, cement, and steel – readily transferable to adjacent processes – and accelerates Europe’s path to climate-neutral industry.

The consortium

15 partners from research, industry and engineering across Europe, coordinated by Tecnalia.

Meet the consortium
Logo Tecnalia

EHEAT in motion

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