“Industry needs fossil fuels because it needs high temperatures.”

Industrial heat is a range, not a single number: 85°C pasteurises milk, 200°C dries paper, 1,450°C makes cement. 37% of the EU's final energy demand for process heating is below 200°C, within reach of solar thermal, geothermal, waste heat and heat pumps today.

Higher up the scale, electric boilers reach about 500°C and electric arc furnaces run at 1,800°C for steel. Fossil combustion is the incumbent everywhere, but it is not the only way to reach any of these temperatures. Different temperatures, different resources, different solutions.