Volts Electrifying industrial steam with heat pumps
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May 13, 2026 
Addison Stark, co-founder and CEO of Atmos Zero who builds air-source industrial heat pumps, explains why electrifying steam needs a new approach. He discusses designing high-temperature, multi-stage heat pumps, tradeoffs between ambient and waste-heat sourcing, scaling manufacturing, and commercial strategies like hybrid systems and heat-as-a-service.
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Boiler Is The Universal Industrial Lever
- Half of industrial heat is delivered as steam and boilers are highly standardized across thousands of small manufacturers.
- Addison Stark argues targeting the boiler itself (a productized factory-built unit) unlocks broad electrification without redesigning each process.
Resistive Boilers Win Installation But Lose On Fuel Costs
- Electric resistance boilers are cheap to install but make up most lifetime cost in electricity, creating a poor LCOS versus gas.
- Addison notes 80–90% of levelized cost for resistive units is driven by electricity price and spark spread economics.
Waste Heat Is Often Economically Unscalable
- Waste heat recovery often fails economically at small scales because projects are bespoke and engineering-heavy.
- Addison warns below‑100°C waste heat is hard to monetize for sub‑10 MW facilities where bespoke costs kill payback.