Energy scarcity and subsequent global fossil fuel market shocks have become a significant source of concern for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Though much of the electrical grid is becoming cleaner by the year, process heating in industry, which accounts for over half of all industrial energy usage and GHG emissions, is nearly entirely (>95%) supplied by natural gas (NG), coal, and byproduct fuels. The DOE’s resiliency and industrial energy security goals regarding process heating yield three pillars: electrification, LCFFES (Low-Carbon Fuels, Feedstocks, and Energy Sources), and process heat avoidance. Many alternatives, technologies and strategies exist that can reduce dependency on or decouple from this fossil fuel usage. A key issue for engineers and manufacturing planners, per survey of an industrial working group, is a lack of awareness or understanding of the alternatives. Another issue relayed by industry regarding electric/hybrid technologies is the technological limitations of the alternatives; however, this may in some cases be ill-informed by the first issue. The most reported issue was consistently a lack of financial incentives. This paper aims to compile information on a variety of available or near-term upcoming strategies as well as provide levelized cost of heating (LCOH) analysis of each method in general terms as part of addressing awareness and understanding concerns from the working group survey. LCOH analysis puts forward a straightforward form of technoeconomic metric useful in measuring financial feasibility and enables comparison across different technologies. Scope 1 and 2 emissions information is included as an additional comparator of technologies.
