High-Temperature & Process / Industrial Heat Pumps: Heat pumps for landlords

Why industrial landlords with process heat have the strongest carbon case

Where a let or owner-operated industrial building uses heat for a process rather than just to keep people warm, the case for a high-temperature heat pump is among the strongest in the whole sector. Manufacturing, laundries and food production need hot water and process heat at 70 to 90C and beyond, and a high-temperature heat pump can deliver that while recovering waste heat from refrigeration, compressors or process streams that would otherwise be thrown away. For an industrial landlord or an estates manager on an energy-intensive site, this is not a comfort upgrade, it is a direct attack on one of the largest controllable operating costs and a large slice of the site's carbon. Replacing gas or oil process heat removes on-site combustion, cuts Climate Change Levy exposure, and turns a volatile fuel bill into something far more predictable.

The commercial pull is real too. Energy-intensive industrial tenants increasingly answer to sustainability-conscious clients in their own supply chains, and decarbonised process heat is becoming a tender differentiator rather than a nicety. A landlord who delivers low-carbon process heat to an industrial demise is helping the occupier win and retain contracts, which strengthens the lease and the asset and can support a rent that reflects a genuinely future-proofed building. And because this is genuine industrial process heat rather than ordinary office heating, it opens the door to a funding route, the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund, that comfort heating simply cannot reach.

For an industrial landlord the running-cost dynamic is also more favourable than it first appears. Process heat tends to run at high utilisation across long operating hours, which means a well-designed system spends most of its life delivering its rated efficiency rather than idling, so the avoided fuel cost is realised consistently rather than only in deep winter. Where waste heat is recovered from refrigeration or process streams, the effective efficiency rises further still, because that recovered energy would otherwise be vented to atmosphere. The combination of high utilisation, recovered waste heat and reduced Climate Change Levy exposure is why an industrial process scheme can show a stronger return than a comfort-heating retrofit of similar capital, and why it rewards the technical effort of getting the design right.

What a typical install looks like and how we size it

Industrial and process heat pumps span a wide range, from around 100 kW to 2 MW thermal and beyond, delivering high-temperature flow of 70 to 90C or higher through high-temperature units and waste-heat recovery loops, in a plant compound that varies with the process. A system in this range delivers in the region of 200,000 to 5,000,000 kWh of heat a year and saves between 35 and 900 tonnes of CO2 annually, the largest carbon savings in the heat-pump family.

Sizing is driven by the process heat demand and its profile, not by floor area, and waste-heat recovery is modelled as an integral part of the design rather than a bolt-on, because recovering heat from refrigeration or process streams is often what lifts the overall efficiency to a viable level at high flow temperatures. The higher the flow temperature a process needs, the more the design leans on recovered waste heat to keep the effective SCOP sensible, so we map the site's waste-heat sources, refrigeration rejection, compressor heat and process streams, before we size the heat pump itself. We design to BS EN 14825 and BS EN 14511 so the quoted performance is directly comparable across suppliers, which matters on a scheme where the numbers run to seven figures and a landlord cannot afford an optimistic specification.

Costs, payback and tax relief

An industrial or process heat-pump scheme typically runs £200,000 to £3,000,000 or more, with a simple payback in the region of 9 years before any grant, and often shorter where waste-heat recovery and high utilisation drive large fuel savings. For a landlord or industrial occupier paying UK corporation tax, the heat pump qualifies for full expensing, a 100% first-year deduction with no cap, permanent from April 2026, while unincorporated businesses use the Annual Investment Allowance.

On a scheme of this scale the combination of grant funding and full expensing is what makes the numbers work, so the two are modelled together rather than in isolation. Because energy is so often a major operating cost on an industrial site, the avoided fuel cost and the reduced Climate Change Levy exposure compound year on year, and the carbon saving improves further as the grid decarbonises. The domestic Boiler Upgrade Scheme is irrelevant here. Our cost guide works through the economics at industrial scale so a landlord can see how the grant, the tax relief and the fuel saving stack into a single business case.

Funding routes in detail

The standout route for industrial process heat is the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund. It supports fuel-switching to industrial heat pumps and waste-heat recovery for sites in eligible SIC codes, including manufacturing, recovery and recycling, data centres, and newer sectors such as controlled-environment horticulture, industrial laundries and textile renting. Intervention is typically in the 30 to 50% range with an SME minimum grant of seventy-five thousand pounds, and the technology must be at TRL 7 or above; the fund runs across 2024 to 2028 and projects must complete by 31 March 2028.

Where the industrial heat feeds a multi-building scheme, the Green Heat Network Fund at up to 50% of eligible costs may also be relevant, and a public-sector industrial occupier might touch the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme. Full expensing or the Annual Investment Allowance underpins the rest of the capital. We check your site's SIC-code eligibility for the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund at feasibility and build the application around the project, because the competition windows are periodic and the eligibility and TRL rules are specific enough that a late or mis-scoped application can miss the funding entirely. For a landlord, that early eligibility check is also what tells you whether the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund is realistically on the table for a given site before any design cost is committed.

Compliance and sector considerations

High-temperature process duties drive the compliance picture toward natural refrigerants. The F-Gas phase-down of high-GWP gases pushes high-temperature designs toward natural refrigerants such as R290 propane, ammonia and CO2, and flammable-refrigerant plant carries DSEAR and ATEX siting requirements that must be designed for from the outset rather than retrofitted. Eligibility for the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund depends on the site SIC code qualifying, so that is confirmed early.

The general commercial set still applies: BS EN 14511 and BS EN 14825 performance ratings, the BS EN 378 safety and environmental standard, F-Gas certified refrigerant handling, and a BS 4142 acoustic assessment for external plant. A scheme of this electrical scale almost always needs an early DNO supply assessment, because a multi-hundred-kilowatt or megawatt heat pump can require a significant supply upgrade with its own long lead time. For an industrial landlord, the DSEAR and ATEX dimension is the one most often underestimated, and getting the refrigerant choice and plant siting right at the design stage is what keeps a high-temperature scheme both safe and compliant for the life of the installation.

How we approach this kind of project

Industrial process work demands the most technical rigour, so we lead with the data and the standards. We model running cost and carbon from your real consumption, design waste-heat recovery as a core part of the system rather than an extra, and specify to BS EN 14825 and BS EN 14511 so your figures stand up against any compliant supplier and any second opinion you choose to seek.

We design the natural-refrigerant plant to DSEAR and ATEX where flammable refrigerants are used, submit any G99 grid application and open the DNO conversation early because the supply upgrade is so often the long pole, and we check eligibility and build the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund application around the project. You receive a fixed-price proposal with an insurance-backed warranty. On energy-intensive sites we would rather model the worst case honestly and lose a job than win it on an optimistic number, because an industrial scheme that underperforms its quote is a problem a landlord lives with for years.

We also plan the changeover around the occupier's production calendar, because an industrial process cannot simply stop while plant is swapped. Where the site runs continuously we phase the work, keep the existing heat source available through commissioning, and prove the new plant against its design figures before the old system is decommissioned. That measured handover matters more on a process site than anywhere else, since a heat supply that drops below specification does not just cool a room, it can interrupt production, so we commission to the modelled performance and only stand the legacy plant down once the heat pump has demonstrated it can carry the duty.

An illustrative example

As an illustrative composite, and not a real named client or project, consider a commercial industrial laundry, an eligible Industrial Energy Transformation Fund sector, using gas to raise process hot water above 75C, where energy was a major operating cost. The design was a 600 kW high-temperature heat pump using a natural refrigerant, recovering waste heat from the wash process and lifting it to a process flow of around 78C.

Modelled heat delivered was in the region of 1,800,000 kWh a year at an SCOP of about 3.2 at the high flow temperature, an illustrative saving near £140,000 a year against the prior gas cost, with roughly 330 tonnes of CO2 saved annually and a payback around 6.5 years. In this composite an Industrial Energy Transformation Fund grant met a significant share of the capital, the waste-heat recovery lifted overall efficiency, Climate Change Levy exposure fell, and the decarbonised process heat became a tender differentiator with the occupier's contract clients. Every figure here is illustrative and depends on your process, refrigerant choice and tariff.

If your industrial estate also has standard space-heating demises, see our commercial air-source heat pumps page, and for a campus or district-scale scheme see heat networks and ambient loops. When you are ready, read the cost guide and the funding routes, then request a feasibility or browse the heat pump FAQs.