Watch: can ‘electric factories’ become the norm in a net zero world?
Gaurav Sharma
May 01, 2025
Hydrocarbons have been the heat source of factories and plant furnaces for nearly a century. Could electricity replace them in a march to net zero?
For nearly a hundred years, the typical global industrial complex has operated in largely the same way with fossil fuel burning furnaces at the very core of high heat generation for the plant.
But in the world’s march to a net zero future, working concepts are now among us that use only electricity to generate industrial-scale heat or crack hydrocarbons in the refining complex.
Doing so by deploying electricity generated from renewable energy may cut global CO2 emissions by 2 billion tonnes per year and create a $1 trillion industrial decarbonisation market, according to analysts.
Ideas many would have deemed impractical, especially since electricity itself was generated from fossil fuels, are now being made viable by proponents of clean technologies or “cleantech”. Among them is Coolbrook, a Finland-headquartered engineering technology company.
At its pilot plant in Geelen, The Netherlands, Coolbrook has developed new technology that uses only electricity to generate heat by deploying a rotating device without the need to burn anything.
The device’s blades accelerate air, or an array of gasses, as needed to supersonic velocity, which is subsequently lowered down to subsonic velocity, thereby generating a shock wave reaction that converts kinetic energy to high intensity thermal energy very rapidly.
The heat is generated in milliseconds volumetrically inside the gas and is not transferred from outside through a surface. Temperature generation may be increased in multiples of 200C (392F) up to 1700C.
The start-up claims to have identified over 40 use cases for its technology, especially in high temperature carbon intensive industries like cement, iron, steel, plastics and petrochemicals.
Energy Connects visited Coolbrook’s plant in The Netherlands and spoke to its CEO Joonas Rauramo, to find out more about how to make ‘electric factories’ the norm for the future.
