Navigating the future of industrial heat : Modelling tipping points for decarbonisation in light industries

Sammanfattning

Industrial heat decarbonisation faces technical and competitiveness challenges. However, opportunities are particularly attainable within light industries, where temperatures are predominantly below 200 °C. Realising these opportunities requires assessing the cost-competitiveness of heat produced from low-emission technologies relative to current market benchmarks (i.e. coal and gas boilers) and identifying actions to address barriers to their competitiveness. This thesis responds to these needs by conducting a techno-economic analysis that combines the Levelised Cost Of Heat framework with a Linear Programming optimisation model that determines optimal hybrid Power-to-Heat solutions under different sensitivities, based on hourly day-ahead electricity prices. Results show that energy input costs are a central factor in the competitiveness of technologies, and the advantage of fossil fuels over other energy inputs remains a significant barrier to the uptake of low-emission options. For electricity-based solutions, this barrier can be mitigated through the adoption of heat pumps or by hybridising electric boilers with gas boilers. High capital expenditure particularly for heat pumps, geothermal systems, and certain hybrid configurations emerges as another major obstacle. A third barrier is the absence or limited uptake of flexibility incentives, as the results indicate that hybridising electric boilers with thermal energy storage and gas boilers can deliver substantial improvements in competitiveness when such incentives are available. Targeted actions to address each of these barriers are discussed.