Doctorat / PhD — Impact of regulatory framework and energy policies on the pathway to decarbonise industrial heat

Doctorat / PhD Profil chercheur : First Stage Researcher (R1) Type de contrat : Temporary Date limite de candidature : 1 Dec 2026 - 17:00 (Europe/Madrid) Date de début : 1 Mar 2027 Programme UE : Horizon Europe - MSCA Référence : DC15 Département : Energy Engineering Domaine : Technology » Energy technology

Commercial Industrial High Temperature Heat Pumps (IHTHPs) currently top out at around 130°C in a closed cycle arrangement. Higher temperatures can be achieved though steam compression, typically to about 160°C. Market analysis of the technology indicates that despite the progress made so far, closed cycle IHTHPs running at 160°C are still mostly bespoke designs for specific applications due to several technical and economic hurdles. Most research and Development efforts today tackle only some of the technical hurdles yielding incremental gains but fall short of breakthroughs. This led to the conception of the project: Industrial decarbonisation using innovative low-grade heat upgrade ( HeatMind s) which succeeded in securing funding from the European Commission under the MARIE Skłodowska-CURIE ACTIONS Doctoral Network (DN) Scheme. HeatMinds will address the challenges in an integrated, step-change approach through conducting multidisciplinary research and development to further our understanding of IHTHP, both at the overall system and component levels while addressing sustainability, economic social impact and energy policy aspects to support realising its potential to provide a breakthrough towards full industrial heat decarbonisation while providing specialised training for 15 doctoral researchers to help establish the backbone of an important industry. Within HeatMinds, Work Package 4 will develop integrated tools that ensure the sustainable deployment of IHTHPs, minimising environmental impact while maximising economic and social benefits, via harmonising electrification across sectors, embedding sustainability, and identifying enabling policy and regulatory instruments that would support technology pathways and the development of a technology roadmap for full deployment by 2035. This job offer (DC15) aims to quantify how energy policies and regulatory frameworks affect industrial heat decarbonisation, linking engineering performance and heat production costs to the deployment of industrial high-temperature heat pumps (IHTHPs). To this end, four research objectives are set: (1) to develop a comprehensive assessment of the current heat generation/upgrade installations in EU, sensitive to operating conditions and scale; (2) to assess the impact of regulatory compliance on the levelized cost of heat produced, for selected use cases; (3) to develop logical-numerical algorithms to identify ineffective elements of the regulatory framework in EU, and assess the impact of alternative measures on LCoH and on energy policies (accomplishment of decarbonisation objectives); (4) to develop future scenarios under different regulatory frameworks,…