A Technology-Neutral Emissions Standard for Clean Industrial Heat

This policy design brief by Energy Innovation proposes a technology-neutral emissions standard for industrial heat to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conventional pollutants. The author outlines specific design considerations for lawmakers to ensure the standard is simple to administer, incentivizes efficiency, and provides long-term certainty for industrial investment.

• The proposed emissions standard would set a declining limit on carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOX), sulfur oxides (SOX), and particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) emitted per unit of heat used in industrial processes.
• To avoid penalizing efficient technologies like heat pumps, the standard should be based on 'useful heat'—heat used productively—rather than input energy or total heat generated, thereby excluding heat losses such as hot exhaust gases.
• The author recommends applying standards to both new and existing equipment concurrently. New equipment standards should decline to zero over 10–15 years, while existing equipment standards should decline over 30–40 years to account for longer equipment lifetimes.
• The standard should be based on direct 'scope 1' emissions from the industrial facility and ignore 'scope 2' emissions from purchased electricity. This approach prevents the discouragement of electrification and avoids the political and technical complexity of evaluating electricity supply.
• To maintain simplicity while accounting for the varying difficulty of decarbonizing different heat levels, the standard could be defined by a mathematical function or bins based on the heat's temperature and power (delivery rate).

APA

RISSMAN, J. (2024). A Technology-Neutral Emissions Standard for Clean Industrial Heat. Energy Innovation. https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/A-Technology-Neutral-Emissions-Standard-for-Clean-Industrial-Heat.pdf

Chicago

RISSMAN, JEFFREY. A Technology-Neutral Emissions Standard for Clean Industrial Heat. Energy Innovation, 2024. https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/A-Technology-Neutral-Emissions-Standard-for-Clean-Industrial-Heat.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=RISSMAN |first1=JEFFREY |title=A Technology-Neutral Emissions Standard for Clean Industrial Heat |publisher=Energy Innovation |date=July 2024 |url=https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/A-Technology-Neutral-Emissions-Standard-for-Clean-Industrial-Heat.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rissman2024technologyneutral, author = {RISSMAN, JEFFREY}, title = {{A Technology-Neutral Emissions Standard for Clean Industrial Heat}}, institution = {Energy Innovation}, year = {2024}, month = jul, url = {https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/A-Technology-Neutral-Emissions-Standard-for-Clean-Industrial-Heat.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }