LEARN / GLOSSARY
Process heat
Thermal energy used directly in industrial production rather than converted from electricity. It is the part of industrial energy demand that electrification does not straightforwardly reach, and it is why some industries face an energy constraint that is not an electricity constraint.
Definition
Process heat is heat applied directly to a material to drive a physical or chemical change: melting, calcining, smelting, drying, reforming. It is distinguished by temperature, and the highest-temperature processes are concentrated in cement, glass, primary metals and much of chemicals.
Why the dictionary version is insufficient
Industrial energy demand is commonly discussed as electricity demand. For a large part of heavy industry the binding requirement is temperature delivered to a material, which today is supplied mainly by combustion. Whether that requirement can be met electrically depends on the temperature, the equipment and the process chemistry, and for the hottest processes it currently cannot be met economically.
Why it matters for capacity
A reindustrialisation programme that treats industrial energy as an electricity problem will underestimate what several industries actually need. For those sectors the question is not how power is generated but whether the process can use electricity at all, which is a question about furnaces rather than about the grid.
Related terms
Firm power · Dispatchable · Load factor
Appears in
Why Reindustrialization Requires More Electricity
What Is the Electric Grid?
Read next
Why Reindustrialization Requires More Electricity
Sources
- U.S. Department of Energy, Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office, industrial heat. energy.gov
- North American Electric Reliability Corporation, 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment. nerc.com
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electricity generation, capacity, and sales in the United States. eia.gov