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Food and beverage production, paper and pulp, textiles, chemicals, transport equipment, and some high-temperature industries can use thermal energy storage (TES) to help reduce fossil-fuel heat. TES stores heat made by another source—such as electrified equipment, solar thermal, geothermal, or recovered heat—and supplies it later. Whether it replaces a burner’s heat, preheats materials or combustion inputs, or simply shifts when heat is generated depends on the process and the system design.
Which industries are candidates for thermal energy storage?
The strongest starting point is not an industry name but a facility’s heat duties: the temperature required, how heat is transferred, when demand occurs, and whether stored heat can meet the process specification. A single sector can include both lower-temperature steam needs and demanding high-temperature operations.
Food and beverages
Food plants use heat for steam, drying, sterilization, blanching, roasting, and pasteurization. These duties make the sector a candidate for electrified heat paired with storage, where a system can charge when electricity or another heat source is available and deliver heat when production needs it. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) describes concentrating solar power (CSP) steam used in nut processing and a separate dairy pasteurization integration. These are examples of renewable heat applications, not proof that TES displaced all fossil heat at either facility.
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Paper and pulp
Paper and pulp production includes substantial heat and steam demand, including drying. DOE identifies pulp and paper drying as an example for underground thermal energy storage (UTES). The International Energy Agency (IEA) also includes paper and wood products among industries that rely on low-temperature heat and steam.
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Textiles and transport equipment
The IEA identifies textiles and transport equipment among diverse manufacturing activities with low-temperature heat and steam demand. Suitable facilities may be candidates for electrified heat with TES, but the sector label alone does not establish that every process is low-temperature or compatible with a particular storage system.
Chemicals
Chemical production appears both among the IEA’s low-temperature heat-and-steam group and among DOE’s high-temperature industrial applications. That range reflects different processes and products: the relevant question is the temperature and delivery conditions of a specific heat duty, not whether a plant is simply classified as “chemical.”
Ore and mineral processing, iron and steel, cement, and glass
DOE identifies these as potential high-temperature TES applications. Some processes require temperatures above 1,400°C. For such duties, DOE describes storage as a way to reduce fuel consumption by preheating fuel, oxidizer, or process material. That can lower the fossil-fuel requirement without replacing the entire high-temperature heat duty.
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Petroleum refining
DOE identifies refining as a sector where solar-thermal power could replace fossil fuels. That supports refining as a potential application for renewable process heat, but does not establish a specific TES deployment at a refinery.
What TES can replace—and what it cannot
Storage shifts heat across time; the charging source determines whether the stored heat is low-carbon. A thermal store charged by renewable electricity, solar thermal, geothermal heat, or recovered heat can help displace fossil heat if the stored energy is integrated into a process that would otherwise use fossil fuel. A store charged by fossil-derived heat does not automatically cut fossil use or emissions.
TES is therefore generally one part of a heat-supply system, rather than a stand-alone heat source. Depending on process requirements, stored heat may supply heat directly, serve as steam or another heat-transfer medium, or preheat fuel, oxidizer, or feedstock. Whether it can fully replace a burner depends on the required temperature, heat-transfer method, operating profile, and retrofit constraints.
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- KEY DESIGN FEATURES: Designed with rigid chassis and seam welded shroud | Thoughtful interior design for easy maintenance
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The IEA describes TES as an enabling technology for connecting variable renewable electricity with continuous industrial heat demand. Pairing storage with electric heat can also provide flexibility and reduce exposure to peak electricity prices. These benefits depend on the charging source, operating schedule, grid and tariff conditions, and system integration.
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How storage temperature and technology affect fit
Lower-temperature storage
Lower-temperature TES can serve duties such as food and beverage drying or sterilization. DOE’s 2023 assessment uses “high-temperature TES” (HTTES) for storage above 300°C; that is a storage category, not a universal dividing line between low- and high-temperature industrial processes.
High-temperature storage
DOE distinguishes sensible, latent, and thermochemical storage. Sensible storage using liquids or solid particles has been deployed or is under pilot demonstration. DOE reports significant material gaps for latent storage beyond water or ice, and for thermochemical storage. The IEA’s 2025 executive summary says simple materials such as sand, cement, and bricks can be used in thermal storage systems up to 1,000°C; this is a report-level characterization, not a specification for every system.
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DOE says existing state-of-the-art CSP plants use molten nitrate salts for both thermal storage and heat transfer. For systems above 700°C, it identifies molten chloride salts, solid particles, and supercritical carbon dioxide among researched heat-transfer media. Those examples describe technology status; they do not mean every medium is commercially mature for industrial process heat.
Underground thermal energy storage
UTES can store heat in geological formations. DOE describes aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES) as groundwater-based and seasonal; borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) as a closed loop in bedrock, with drilling and materials contributing to installation cost; and reservoir thermal energy storage (RTES) as using deeper formations and envisioned for higher temperatures. DOE describes an industrial RTES demonstration in California as work intended to move the technology closer to commercial use, so industrial RTES should be treated as developing rather than established at broad commercial scale.
How to assess a facility’s fit
Before sizing new heat supply or storage, assess efficiency measures such as waste-heat recovery, insulation, process control, and plant-level thermal optimization. Reducing the heat demand can change the amount of new capacity needed.
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- Map the heat duties. Record process delivery temperatures, heat-transfer media, hourly demand, operating schedules, and seasonal variation. Separate duties that might accept direct stored heat from those where storage would only preheat an input.
- Identify the charging source. Compare available renewable electricity, solar thermal, geothermal, recovered heat, or other supply options, and determine when each can charge the store.
- Match storage duration to the demand gap. Establish whether the system needs to shift heat within a day, bridge longer interruptions, or store heat seasonally. Do not assume a technology suited to one duration will fit another.
- Check site and integration constraints. For underground systems, geology and drilling are material considerations. For any option, assess grid access, energy-price structure, retrofit limits, heat-transfer interfaces, space, and integration costs.
- Define the fossil displacement being targeted. Specify which fuel-fired duty is reduced, whether fossil equipment remains for backup or peak demand, and how the system operates when stored heat is unavailable.
These checks are more useful than choosing a storage technology from a sector label alone. The DOE and IEA sources establish technical use cases and sector examples, not a facility-by-facility feasibility assessment or a complete count of industrial deployments.
What the sector-level emissions figures mean
In its 2025 industry analysis, the IEA says industries depending primarily on low-temperature heat and steam represent roughly 70% of global industrial energy consumption. Its grouping spans food and beverages, textiles, chemicals, transport equipment, wood products, and paper. The IEA estimates that this group produced nearly 3 gigatonnes of direct energy-related CO₂ in 2023—about half of direct industrial emissions—and reports an approximately 8% decline in those direct energy-related emissions since 2013. These figures describe the sector group, not emissions avoided by TES or the amount of fossil heat already displaced by storage.
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