Untapped potential (Industrial solar thermal)

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http://www.earthscan.co.uk/news/article/mps/uan/570/v/3/sp/

At 30%, the industrial sector of OECD countries has the highest share of total energy use of any part of the economy, closely followed by transport. Yet because energy from fossil fuels has long been cheap and seemingly infinite, manufacturing companies have so far taken only modest steps towards replacing energy from fossil fuels with energy from renewable sources.

The use of solar energy in manufacturing and industrial processes, and to generate heat for production halls, has been limited to just a few applications. The vast majority of solar thermal collectors that have been installed world-wide, representing a total thermal capacity of around 105 GWth, are used almost exclusively for domestic hot water or for swimming pools and space heating in the residential and tourism sectors (Figure 1).1

Therefore, one of the first steps for IEA Task 33/IV was to investigate the potential of solar process heat, to document existing plants and uses, and to analyse the experiences gained from these plants. Studies of the potential in three countries – Spain,Portugal and Austria – have shown that the need for lowtemperature industrial heat, which could be supplied using solar heat, is around 26 PJ (technically achievable potential).2 Even if only 5% of this potential were to be achieved in the coming years, equal to only 0.6 % of the low-temperature heat requirement of these three countries, this would require the installation of one million square metres of collectors with a capacity of 700 MWth.

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