US factories are struggling to get cleaner heat. These ideas may help.

Factories that make food, chemicals, and other goods mostly run on natural gas to produce heat, and that's a big source of the country's carbon emissions. Cleaner options exist, like industrial heat pumps and electric boilers, but electricity costs more than gas for industrial users almost everywhere in the country. That price gap is slowing the switch even at companies that want to make it.

Researchers are testing a few fixes. One idea, studied by UC Berkeley researchers, is having factories build their own solar or wind projects on-site, paired with heat pumps or heat-storing batteries, instead of waiting on the regular power grid, which can take years to connect new renewable projects. Their analysis found this approach could make electric heat cheaper than gas for close to a third of industrial heat needs by 2035, especially for lower-temperature processes like beer or paper making, and for very high-heat jobs like glass or steel making using battery storage.

Another approach is changing how electric rates are set. In California, a bill in the legislature would let regulators create special utility rates to make electric heat more affordable for large manufacturers. A separate study found that charging factories only the direct cost of the extra electricity they use, without the added fees that pay for grid upkeep and other programs, could make heat pumps competitive with gas in California and would at least narrow the gap in Michigan. None of this changes homeowner electric bills directly, but it points to the same underlying issue: electricity often costs more than gas, which is part of what makes cleaner heating harder to justify, in factories and houses alike.