At four times the cost of heat electrification will not decarbonize industrial processes anytime soon

Are these costs on a per site scale or just to decarbonize industrial processes across the entire sector? I ask because I wonder whether certain applications are specifically well-tuned to electrification and can be targeted first? 

Of course you can't run a factory on an intermittent heat source like solar; applications for process heat (e.g. production of cement, glass, fuel/chemical processing, etc) are always run 24/7 to maximize output and avoid costs of pre-heating the system. Hydrogen can produce carbon-free heat, but it costs more than electricity due to efficiency loss in its production and the high cost of transporting & storing it.

But wait, there is another way to decarbonize the heat sector. Nuclear power (like fossil fuel) also makes heat for a small fraction of the cost of electricity.  And as described in this article on Canadian process heat applications, some nuclear designers think that market could develop soon.

For mid-to-high temperature applications, nuclear heat is a third to half the cost of electricity.  But when the heat is needed at low temperature, such as for district heat application (e.g. 100C), nuclear can supply heat for only about a tenth the cost of electricity, because it's really the waste heat being utilized, aka combined heat and power.  

To utilize combined heat and power, we need district heat networks, which use hot water as the energy carrier, and bring heat to homes and businesses.  This can be much cleaner than electric heat using heat pumps, because heat is an extremely seasonal load.  During the winter demand peak, the oldest and least efficient fossil fuel fired power plants are brought on-line to augment supply, so that electricity is typically much dirtier than the year-around average (solar PV of course makes this worse by being absent much of winter).

Heat networks also would eliminate the noise pollution produced by air-source heat pumps (ground source pumps are more expensive and un-maintainable).

Heat networks were built in many European cities back during the oil shocks of the 1970s (when American cities were switching to fossil gas); they are also popular in China and Russia. 

Energy prices are more location sensitive than the table shows.  And tarifs are modular, not average.  In Quebec the price paid by large users for electricity according to the 'L' tarif is about 0,04$ per kWh, not 0,1$/kWh as the table shows.  So 2x instead of 4.4 times.  This is true in other areas as well.  Solar in the newest contracts in Spain and the Emirates is sold at less than 0,02$ per kWh.  This is probably enough to use the solar electricity to produce hydrogen intermitently that can be used for continuous thermal processes.  If you add a carbon tax to integrate the real cost of carbon externalities, there should be many places in the world where thermal processes can be done with electricity.  Probably the three largest sources of industrial CO2, Concrete, steel and aluminium production have carbon free alternatives.  So it could be done soon if the will was there.

Thanks for this information.

One comment and one question:

I wonder why the price of electricity in Norway is not listed here. I am guessing that the cost of electricity in Norway is much less than what appears in the figure.  Other industries, most notably aluminum smelting and gas compression, thrive in the relatively low cost electricity environment in Norway.

Given the higher costs for electricity and the high cost of carbon sequestration and storage (CCS), I wonder how the relative costs stack up, given, for example, a cost of $90 per tonne of CO2 for CCS?  Which is less cost prohibitive, say, for cement manufacture? How about for other thermal processes?

You are neglecting several factors.  First, the huge wave of new renewable generation is already producing electricity at a quarter of the costs you are accustomed to thinking about.    Those costs won't become available to heavy industry for a while, because it is obviously more profitable to offset a six cent KWh than it is to offset a heat source which costs the equivalent of 1.5 cents.

The global records to date are 1.1 cents per KWh for windpower, and 1.35 cents per KWh for solar.   Those are public prices, and there are probably better prices being put into contract which are not public or not public yet.

As we grow into a mature wind and solar resource we are going to see wind and solar produce power above the immediate load.   This is happening today, but only for a scant few hours per year, which isn't enough to justify building an industrial facility, but it is enough to show us what the future will look like.  This is obviously the electricity which will be available to be stored, once we get to the point of wanting to build storage to facilitate renewables.  But before that happens a lot of industrial processes will discover that they are able to conform their energy needs to the time that wind and solar excess generation become available - provided the power is sold at a discount.   The discount in principle will be whatever is less than the added cost of storage at the time.   Other factors will also engage, including the fact that some of this dirt cheap renewable power will be built to serve industrial processes, simply because that allows them access to low prices before lower prices become available on the grid.

There will be movement of some heavy industry.   They have done it in the past and they will do it in the future.  There's a lot of cheap land in a lot of windy and hot places.   The total U.S. and global need for electricity to displace all fossil fuels is about 1.8 to 2 times the current electricity consumption, and that requires about 3% of the world's dry land to be covered with wind and solar generation.  Nearly all of that land can and will be dual use, since wind and solar equipment do not require most of the actual surface.

Finally, for now, the conversion from fossil fuels to electricity is often much more efficient than expected.   I've listened to steel representatives claim that carbon steel can't be made without fossil fuels, but Brazil has been doing it for decades, and we can certainly draw a little CO2 out of the atmosphere to mix with the iron if that becomes the best cleanest and cheapest way to do this.

Those portions of the energy mix which depend on fossil fuels only need to be thinking about this today if they don't want to be left behind.  We will convert all electricity, all gasoline, all furnaces which use natural gas, heating oil or propane, and a lot of other transportation resources before we start seeing easy solutions for heavy metal melting and similar heat-intensive industry.   Those industries are about seven to ten percent of all energy, and if they wind up being the last fossil fuel users, that's not a problem.

Just be sure that there are solutions, even if we wind up making duplicate fossil fuels from air and water using renewable electricity.   Those fuels promise to be cheaper in the long run, if we don't find better alternatives.  I think in terms of climate solutions, but I remind everyone that fossil fuels are deadly and cause an unacceptable amount of disease now that we have cheaper clean alternatives.

I also have spent 35 years trying to draw attention to economically viable alternatives to fossil and nuclear power, and today they are so abundant that we can afford to leave the heavy heat industries alone for a decade.   After that, the ones which aren't moving to renewables had better watch out, because other countries are going that way and most likely they will reduce costs as they do so.

The data in this chart is misleading, since it assumes a static pricing environment and does not take into account the benefits of energy storage. It also contradicts the many studies that have identified electrification as the most effective format for decarbonizing industry, e.g. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/Sustainab...

PV and wind prices are dropping monthly, and aggressive builds in e.g. Europe have led to massive curtailment. Emerging technologies like Perovskite cells promise to further increase efficiencies and reduce pricing in solar.

These trends will continue to reduce costs in instances where industry is deploying dedicated renewables. When grid-connected, the benefits stack includes savings and new revenues that need to be taken into account for an honest comparison.

There is no panacea for the energy transition (especially overhyped hydrogen), and a wide range of technologies must be deployed on an application-by-application basis.