This map shows where to swap out industrial boilers for heat pumps

Yahoo

04-03-2025

U.S. manufacturers rely on more than 30,000 small industrial boilers to make a large number of things: foods, drinks, paper, chemicals, clothes, electronics, furniture, transportation equipment, and more.
The vast majority of these smaller boilers burn fossil fuels — mostly gas, but sometimes coal or oil. Their emissions contribute not only to climate change but to smoggy skies and elevated asthma rates, too.
Swapping out such boilers for electric industrial heat pumps would be a quick win for communities and regulators looking to improve air quality, said Hellen Chen, industry research analyst at the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, or ACEEE.
Only about 5% of process heat in industry currently comes from electricity, but industrial heat pumps are gaining some momentum. They've already been installed in at least 13 American factories, helping reduce pollution from brewing beer, pasteurizing milk, and drying lumber. Kraft Heinz, the famed ketchup and mac-and-cheese maker, plans to install heat pumps at 10 factories by 2030. Oat-milk producer Oatly is considering one at a New Jersey plant. And policymakers in Southern California passed a rule last summer to phase out industrial boilers, a move that will likely boost heat-pump replacements.
Industrial boilers spew a panoply of air pollutants as byproducts of combustion, including nitrogen oxides, or NOx. NOx is harmful in itself but also contributes to the formation of ozone, a key ingredient of smog that can inflame airways and cause a range of respiratory problems, especially in children whose lungs are still developing.
To identify opportunities to clean up air quality, Chen and ACEEE colleagues recently mapped areas where ozone levels exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard, the number of small industrial boilers in each area, and the fuel they use. In total, they found that more than 5,400 boilers currently burn in 174 counties. The team focused on smaller industrial boilers, defined as having capacities up to 50 million British thermal units per hour, because their emissions are often overlooked, yet the equipment is the easiest to switch out for heat pumps, Chen said.
'In areas where the baseline community pollution burden is already high, there is a really important opportunity,' Chen said. Heat pumps are 'a cleaner and more efficient technology that is ready for adoption today.'
Depending on the boiler size, fuel type, and other aspects, the reduction in onsite NOx emissions from swapping just one industrial boiler for a heat pump is equivalent to taking 400 to 10,000 cars off the road, by Chen's calculation.
The industrial emissions reductions would add up. Some counties host large stocks of these smaller boilers: Cook County, Illinois, has 297; Philadelphia County, 127; Harris County, Texas, 123; and Los Angeles County, 111, per the ACEEE map.
Heat pumps are available now for low-temperature industrial processes, making them well-suited to industries like food and beverage manufacturing, which relies almost exclusively on heat below 266 degrees Fahrenheit (130 degrees Celsius). Low-temperature heat also plays a significant role in areas like chemicals and paper production.
Industrial heat pumps, which were first developed in the 1980s, are wildly energy efficient and can use just one-third to a quarter as much energy as boilers. Depending on the relative prices of gas and electricity, that superior efficiency can deliver lower operating costs.
Heat pumps can also improve product quality by providing more precise temperature control. Back in 2003, the Department of Energy found that heat pumps produce higher-quality dried lumber.
Plus, heat pumps can have a smaller physical footprint than boilers with similar capacities since they don't store fuel, making them advantageous for facilities with limited floor space. Since they're modular, they can be installed in parallel to meet heat demands as needed, Chen said.
Added up, these and other co-benefits can save facilities another 20% to 30% on top of reduced energy costs.
The major impediment to switching out combustion boilers, which can last 20 to 40 years or more, is the upfront cost. The payback period for an industrial heat pump retrofit is typically on the high side — between five and seven years, Chen said.
'Unfortunately, many companies are looking for very short ROIs [returns on investment] of under three years,' Chen said, making the business case difficult even if the lifetime savings are great. In new facilities, heat pumps can cost the same as gas boilers to install, she noted.
Policy support can make it more logical for a business to take on these upfront costs.
At least one air quality regulator is beginning to push industries to decarbonize. Last year, California's South Coast Air Quality Management District passed a first-in-the-nation measure that aims to gradually phase out NOx emissions from 2026 to 2033 from more than 1 million large water heaters, boilers with capacities of up to 2 million British thermal units per hour, and process heaters in the area, which will necessitate the switch to electric tech.
Chen hopes to see more regulators follow the district's lead as well as tackle what is to her the biggest hurdle to electrification in the U.S.: the relatively high cost of electricity compared with gas, known as the 'spark gap.'
The spark gap, the ratio of average electricity price to fossil-gas price (each in dollars per kilowatt-hour), varies from state to state. A ratio of less than about three to four typically makes switching to a heat pump more economically feasible without additional policy support because industrial heat pumps are about three to four times as efficient as gas boilers and thus can lower operating costs, Chen noted.
Electric utilities and regulators could redesign rates to make the electric equipment more attractive. The idea has precedent for home heat pumps, though hasn't been realized for industrial ones yet, as far as Chen's aware.
State and federal programs are also helping to defray the capital costs of electrifying.
California provides $100 million for electric upgrades at factories through the Industrial Decarbonization and Improvement of Grid Operations program. Colorado offers competitive tax credits — up to $168 million in total — for industrial facilities to install improvements that reduce greenhouse gases. Under the Biden administration, about $500 million was granted to Kraft Heinz and others for projects cleaning up emissions from process heat, part of a $6 billion windfall for industrial-decarbonization demonstration projects. But the fate of the awards is unclear as the sweeping federal funding freeze ordered by President Donald Trump in January has, so far, failed to fully thaw.
With momentum growing for zero-emissions equipment like heat pumps, 'we're hoping that … more facilities will see them as a viable technology that's ready to go,' Chen said, and that companies 'will be more confident about applying this technology within their own facilities.'