IN Brief:
- The European Commission has selected 65 industrial heat projects for around €400m of support.
- The projects cover heat pumps, resistance heating, electromagnetic heating, dielectric heating, storage, and renewables.
- Industrial heat electrification will increase demand for power conversion, sensing, controls, and grid-connected electronics.
The European Commission has selected 65 projects across 10 countries for around €400m of support under the Innovation Fund Heat Auction, accelerating the shift from fossil-fired industrial heat to electrified process systems.
The selected projects include industrial heat pumps, direct and indirect electric resistance heating, electromagnetic heating, dielectric heating, thermal storage, and renewable integration. Rather than pointing to a single replacement technology, the auction reflects the varied thermal requirements found across European industry.
Industrial heat is one of the more difficult parts of decarbonisation because process temperatures, duty cycles, plant layouts, and energy contracts vary sharply by sector. Electrical alternatives have to fit around production assets that were often designed for combustion, with limited tolerance for downtime or unstable process control.
Electrified heat also places new demands on electronics. High-power conversion, motor drives, solid-state switching, sensor networks, metering, energy management, and plant-level controls all become more prominent when thermal loads move onto electrical infrastructure.
The same trend is already visible across power electronics. Infineon’s work around AI data-centre, robotics, and infrastructure power, alongside the Moore4Power programme, shows how silicon carbide, gallium nitride, sensing, control, and digital design workflows are being pulled into broader electrification programmes.
Industrial heat adds a different operating profile. Process systems must deliver stable thermal output over long duty cycles, often in plants where electrical capacity, grid connection, and production scheduling are tightly constrained. That increases the value of electronics that can manage high power while providing precise control, diagnostics, and integration with energy management platforms.
Thermal storage changes the control architecture further. Instead of matching electrical input only to immediate heat demand, plants can store energy when electricity is cheaper or cleaner and release heat into production when required. That requires sensors, converters, switching equipment, and control software to coordinate plant demand, grid conditions, and process limits.
The programme also gives component suppliers and system integrators a clearer view of where European industrial electrification spending is likely to move. Heat pumps, electromagnetic heating, and dielectric heating all require different power stages and control approaches, but each depends on robust electronics operating in demanding industrial environments.
The selected projects are expected to cut natural gas consumption and avoid significant carbon emissions over their operating lives. Inside the plant, the engineering challenge is more immediate: factories will need electrical infrastructure that can support process loads historically handled by combustion.
As industrial heat electrification moves from demonstration to deployment, converter efficiency, grid compatibility, sensor accuracy, and controls integration will shape how quickly plants can adopt electrical heat without creating new operational bottlenecks.
