BEIS seeks grant applications for projects to use industrial waste heat: £18 million on offer

BEIS has opened a competition offering up to £18 million of grant funding for projects that will recover and make use of heat from industry.

A study by Element Energy of eight industrial sectors found that in 2014 11TWh/year of industrial heat could have been technically recovered, but only 5TWh/year of this would have been commercially viable. The rest was held back by a lack of insufficient knowledge and information, the complexity of fitting heat recovery technologies to industrial processes and commercial barriers – the payback period for investments and availability of capital. The Industrial Heat Recovery Support (IHRS) programme aims to further understand the identified challenges and barriers to adoption, and to increase industrial confidence in deploying heat recovery technologies by working with industry to address these barriers.

The funding is technology neutral, but specifically for retrofit (it may not be used as capital for new plant) and for projects where a user of the heat is already in place. BEIS says,

  • The heat should be carried in specific flows, including (but not limited to): hot flue gases, exhaust air, cooling fluids from cooling systems, hot product or waste product, hot water drained to a sewer, super heat or condenser heat rejected from refrigeration.
  • The heat should be used to satisfy existing or potential commercially viable heating or cooling demand, conversion to electrical or mechanical power or for export to the national grid or private wire system.
The recovered heat should be capable of being metered or otherwise estimated, so the project can be monitored and evaluated.

The deadline for submissions is 28 December.

See full details here.