Industrial energy use makes up around 32% of global energy consumption, and 74% of that goes towards industrial heat. Industrial heat emits 18% of global GHG emissions and to significantly reduce emissions to reach the Representative Concentration Pathway 2.6 goals, industrial heat processes need to be decarbonized across different sectors globally. While there are many technologies to decarbonize industrial process such as heat pumps and electric boilers, industrial heat batteries, an emerging technology for storing electricity as heat, offer an option for high temperature processes at a low capital cost and high efficiency.

The economic viability of decarbonizing these facilities through renewable energy remains poorly characterized at a global scale. The goal of this master’s thesis is to identify optimal locations where renewable energy is already cost-competitive with conventional grid/fossil-fuel based energy through a technoeconomic analysis of off-grid solar photovoltaic (PV) with battery systems for manufacturing facilities worldwide.

Using industrial facility-level data from Climate Trace, which contains facility name, geographic coordinates, production capacity and emissions profile (CO₂, NOₓ, SOₓ), we characterize the heat demand landscape of industrial manufacturing globally. For each facility, we derive hourly solar generation profiles based on site-specific irradiance data, heat demand based on sector and production capacity, assess available land area suitable for PV deployment, and apply current PV cost assumptions to an optimization model. From this model’s output, we computed hourly dispatch of energy for each industrial facility and the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for a solar plus battery storage configuration. Results identify high-irradiance regions where solar-plus-storage LCOE is competitive with fossil fuel alternatives.

Ongoing work extends this framework to incorporate industrial heat batteries as an alternative to lithium-ion storage, examining how thermal energy storage modifies the LCOE and broadens the set of facilities where full or partial off-grid operation becomes viable. This comparison is particularly relevant for heat-intensive manufacturing processes, where industrial heat batteries may offer cost and efficiency advantages over electrochemical storage. Through the optimization results, we can analyze characteristics, such as capacity factor thresholds, heat demand intensity, and electricity prices, for locations that are ideal for industrial heat batteries.

This analysis provides a globally consistent, data-driven foundation for prioritizing renewable energy deployment in the industrial sector and supports policymakers and project developers in targeting high-impact decarbonization opportunities.