Industrial decarbonisation is usually framed via options that promise deep emissions discount, e.g. green hydrogen and carbon capture. These pathways are important, notably for hard-to-abate sectors, however are nonetheless a number of years away from large-scale adoption
Industry accounted for almost half of India’s last vitality consumption in 2025, a lot of it nonetheless tied to fossil fuels. The story turns into even sharper after we take a look at course of heat. The requirement of low-temperature heat and steam (at lower than 250 levels C) types the spine for numerous processes throughout sectors equivalent to textiles, meals processing, chemical substances, prescribed drugs, and paper and pulp. This course of heat and steam demand is essentially thermal and met via combustion of fossil fuels such coal, oil, and fuel.
The situation turns into crucial at two ranges. First, the deepening geopolitical uncertainty and unstable home provide chains worsens the provision of those fuels. Second, a sizeable chunk of those manufacturing emissions rests inside the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) predominantly concentrated in sectors equivalent to textiles, meals processing and paper. These are the sectors the place coal, firewood, biomass, fuel and furnace oil proceed to run the standard thermal methods equivalent to boilers, thermic fluid heaters, dryers, evaporators and hot-water methods, and so forth.
This is why decarbonising industrial heat is not only a local weather query however a socio-economic prerogative which additional intertwines with different co-benefits equivalent to air high quality, value competitiveness, vitality safety, and employee well-being.
Heat pumps as a answer
Heat pumps enter this dialog as one of the vital sensible, scalable and modular applied sciences for this particular frontier of industrial heat. Unlike boilers, heat pumps don’t create heat by burning gasoline. They transfer and improve heat from one steam to a different, utilizing electrical energy. This is why they’ll ship extra helpful heat than the electrical energy they eat.
Industrial heat pumps typically have a coefficient of efficiency of three to five, which means they’ll present three to 5 models of heat for each unit of electrical energy consumed. Even at greater output temperatures, the place efficiency falls, they’ll stay extra environment friendly than easy electrical resistance-based heating. This effectivity is the core of their decarbonisation worth. It reduces the quantity of electrical energy wanted to affect heat and improves the economics of switching away from combustion. If renewable electrical energy is on the market at aggressive charges, the efficient value of heat from a heat pump turns into enticing even in opposition to standard fuels as of at the moment additionally.
What makes this transition complicated is the way in which industrial heat is presently produced and used. In a typical medium-sized textile ending unit studied in Surat, round 92% of vitality load was thermal, delivered via steam and industrial heat utilizing a mixture of Indonesian coal and lignite. The unit consumed roughly 0.42 kg of Indonesian coal per meter of processed cloth, illustrating the fabric depth of gasoline use embedded in routine operations. Despite this, steam is usually used not directly for producing scorching water, sustaining vessel temperature, or heating surfaces fairly than straight heating the product.
This displays a central inefficiency. Conventional industrial thermal methods in such factories are typically designed across the highest heat requirement, with boilers sized to fulfill peak demand. But many hundreds require lower-quality heat. In such instances, steam is generated at greater temperature and strain, then decreased or diverted for lower-temperature purposes. However, industrial heat pumps observe a completely different engineering mindset: begin with the lowest-temperature heat demand, then enhance heat solely the place wanted. This reverses the legacy boiler method and might cut back total vitality use by 40-60% in appropriate purposes.
This right-sizing logic is especially related in brownfield MSME clusters. Many boilers are outdated, outsized, operated by hand in such settings, and run under optimum capability. Replacing each boiler with a single massive electrical system is usually not sensible. But heat pumps may be modular. They can first serve particular hundreds: pre-heating boiler feedwater, supplying scorching water, supporting dyeing and washing processes, recovering waste heat from effluents or lowering steam demand in evaporators and drying streams.
Their function turns into much more prolific when heating and cooling are thought of collectively. Industrial heat pumps can concurrently generate scorching water, steam, or scorching air whereas producing cooling or dehumidified air as a by-product. In meals processing and digital textile printing, the place course of heat is required alongside managed cooling for course of stability and tools efficiency, heat pumps can concurrently provide helpful heat whereas lowering chiller or air-conditioner hundreds.
Health, security, emission management
Beyond system effectivity, heat pumps can even enhance employee well being and security. Workplace heat publicity is rising as a severe occupational well being danger, particularly in labour-intensive manufacturing facility environments the place inside course of heat compounds rising ambient temperatures. Globally, over 2.4 billion staff are uncovered to extreme heat at work, with the very best publicity charges in Asia and the Pacific. Prolonged office heat is linked to heat exhaustion, coronary heart stroke, cardiovascular pressure, kidney illness, accident danger, and decreased cognitive efficiency.
In parallel, combustion-based course of heat contributes to emission of dangerous air pollution exacerbating respiratory and cardiovascular well being dangers. The public well being dimension is important: fossil-fuel-driven air air pollution induced an estimated 1.72 million untimely deaths in India in 2022, with industrial heat methods being a key supply of those emissions. In this context, rising the usage of electrified heating methods equivalent to industrial heat pump applied sciences, notably inside the temperature ranges through which they are technically possible can considerably enhance air high quality, mitigate greenhouse fuel emissions and cut back well being harms related to each air air pollution and local weather change. By displacing on-site combustion and enabling the combination of heating and cooling, heat pumps can create alternatives for spot and area cooling to enhance thermal consolation on manufacturing facility flooring.
What emerges, then, is not only a know-how shift however a methods transition. Scaling industrial heat pumps will rely upon how effectively they are embedded into current industrial ecosystems via higher course of integration, dependable entry to low-cost electrical energy, and financing fashions that work for industries, particularly MSMEs. Done proper, it could possibly unlock not simply emissions discount, however a extra resilient, environment friendly, and safer mannequin of industrial development.
Vrinda Gupta is affiliate director, Vasudha Foundation, and Srinivas Ethiraj is assistant supervisor, Vasudha Foundation.
Published – May 06, 2026 02:40 pm IST
