Science & technology | Some like it hot

A Finnish firm thinks it can cut industrial carbon emissions by a third

Running a turbine backwards can produce green heat

A cement kiln in China
Just hook it up to a jet engineImage: Alamy

Fossil fUELLED power stations can be replaced by solar panels or nuclear reactors. Petrol-powered cars can be replaced with ones that use zero-carbon electricity to charge batteries. But not every part of an economy is so easy to decarbonise, even in principle. Three heavy industries—cement, chemicals and steelmaking—are particularly tricky to clean up. One reason is that all rely on chemical processes that need very high temperatures.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Some like it hot”

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