Heat: the forgotten word in renewable energy

Put your finger on something made without heat, we dare you! While the transport sector uses 35% of all energy, the production of heat for any purpose consumes half of all energy used by humans. Half! And almost entirely produced  from fossil sources, resulting in 40% of the total CO2 emission. If you have a material and want to turn it into something else, you will use heat. This is a problem you cannot stop. There is no vegan choice for heat. You cannot escape into the bus lane with your electric car, and there’s no railway option for the flight. You’re in it. Almost everything is made using heat. However, we never talk about it. So why should we? 

Recently the Norwegian government launched their “Grønt Industriløft”. One of the most important challenges - heat - wasn’t mentioned with a word. Even though ⅔ of the energy demand from the industry is heat, not electricity. The result? The Norwegian energy transition will go slower, at best. This is about what energy is used for, and using the right technology to fill the need fast. It is impossible to talk about decarbonizing the industry without talking about heat. And a heat problem is most efficiently solved using a heat solution. We need to electrify industrial process heat with renewable energy, and to do that we also need to be able to store the energy as heat.

The Long Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES) and Kyoto Group will co-host the event: "Heat: the forgotten word in renewable energy" at Arendalsuka on August 17 at 08:30 at the fully electric boat Brim Explorer. The event will also be held virtually. Eivind Reiten (Chairman of Kyoto Group and former Minister of Petroleum and Oil in Norway) and Godart van Gendt (Senior Expert at McKinsey & Company, and co-author of the article "Net Zero Heat; is it too hot to handle?")  will participate in the discussion.

Are you not able to join the physical event? Registration is not necessary but you can sign up to get the livestream link directly in your inbox. You will also get the presentation afterwards.