Vale Ventures, a subsidiary of the Brazilian miner Vale, announced a minority investment in Boston based Electrified Thermal Solutions (ETS), a startup that is developing disruptive technologies for the decarbonization of heat generation.
According to a statement issued by Vale, ETS owns technology for heating industrial furnaces through electricity without the use of fossil fuels.
Bruno Arcadier, head of Vale Ventures, said ETS's solution has the potential, in the future, to contribute to the decarbonization of Vale’s scope 1 and scope 3 emissions, relating to our value chain, by generating high temperature heat for industrial processes through electricity.
ETS's low-cost solution has the potential to replace natural gas in heating, through its innovative electrically conductive firebrick, which will be able to generate heat at temperatures up to 1.800 degrees centigrade.
Founded in 2020 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), ETS plans to open its first commercial-scale pilot demonstration plant in 2025.
The enormous potential of such technology derives from the fact that, today, industrial heat processes respond for an estimated 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly from fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas.