Global expansion of solar industrial heat: Key insights from the latest Outlook

Solar process heat is spreading worldwide. Projects are currently under construction or in planning on all five continents. Project developers have reported 73 plants totalling 277 MW that are to be realized by 2027 – the majority of them in Europe. The Solar Industrial Heat Outlook 2025-2027 presents the results of the survey in a series of infographics. Chile and Europe will be the main target regions for solar process heat activities in the coming three years. Substantial heat capacity will also be added in North America, Australia and the Middle East. The new Outlook confirms the trend of the first Solar Industrial Heat Outlook 2023-2026. More heat supply contracts are being signed. The infographic series is available for download here. The SHIP survey was financed by National Resources Canada, while the creation of the graphics were financed by the German research project ProSolNetz.
Source: Solar Industrial Heat Outlook 2025-2027

The Outlook is based on a joint effort by the project development sector. In this year’s survey even more SHIP developers shared their project pipeline data: 29 companies from 15 countries. For the Outlook 2023-2026 from September 2023 only 20 firms from 13 countries participated. The idea of the Outlook is to show the short-term trends and prospects for the global SHIP market.

Chile’s leadership in the SHIP market and the shift toward stationary collectors

Chile dominates the future SHIP market in terms of new capacity additions. This is due to the three multi-MW mining facilities that Chilean power utility Gasco is currently constructing. These are 90 MW and 23 MW respectively for the copper mine Minera Escondida and a further 41 MW for the Spence copper mine.  According to the Chilean consultant Ian Nelsen, the first two plants are under construction. The Spence plant is waiting for the Environmental Impact Study for the mine’s lifetime extension. Nelsen is confident that the complete capacity will be commissioned before the end of 2027.

The three Gasco systems ensure that the Outlook 2025-2027 is dominated by stationary collectors, which account for 72 % of the planned solar thermal capacity. This stands in contrast to the Outlook 2023-2026, in which 77 % of the then planned 260 MW were systems with concentrating collectors. This trend shift is due to the delayed implementation of the Glasspoint plant in Saudi Arabia. In 2023 the Glasspoint team was confident that the first sections of the plant at the aluminium manufacturer Ma’aden would go into operation as early as 2026. Instead, Glasspoint has now reached an agreement with the client for the construction of a 9 MW technology show-case project, which is scheduled to go into operation in 2026. Consequently, the start of construction for the entire plant with more than 1 GW has been delayed.

Nevertheless, let’s take a closer look at the quarter of the projects with concentrating collectors in the Outlook 2025-2027. The extrapolation is based on 34 projects, almost 50 % of the total number of projects included in the Outlook. This is a slight increase compared to the 26 projects that included concentrating collectors and were commissioned in the last three years, 2022 to 2024.

The dominance of heat delivery contracts in large SHIP projects

Heat delivery contracts are the dominating business model of the SHIP industry. 90 % of the planned capacity of 270 MW will be based on such contracts with the clients. This is of course also due to the dominance of the three mining projects in Chile, where Gasco is assuming the role of solar heat supplier. It is therefore worth taking a look at the number of plants that are being realized as heat delivery contracts. Here the share is much smaller. 21 projects out of the 73 systems in the pipeline of project developers are planned to be based on heat delivery contracts. From these figures, it can be concluded that large SHIP projects are more likely to be built by energy service companies, while EPC contracts are generally concluded with customers for smaller projects.

Food industry: Leading sector in solar heat integration

Another aspect highlighted by the Outlook is the industrial sector in which the SHIP installation is planned. The following graphic lists the 73 announced projects by industry sector – divided according to the location of the client, within and outside Europe. Here, the food industry including dairies clearly dominates with 21 projects. This was already the case in the Outlook 2023-2026. The agricultural sector follows in second place this time as this is an important application in the Netherlands in particular. The interest of customers from the chemical/pharmaceutical and beverage sectors – place three and four in this year’s line-up was also already evident in the Outlook 2023-2026. However, the textile sector was stronger back then and is only represented by four projects this time.

Methodological considerations for a more reliable forecast

Two facts about the methodology used to compile the Outlook need to be emphasized here. First, the forecast includes projects globally but excluding China because the information from there is difficult to verify. Secondly, the capacity of the announced SHIP projects is weighted according to the probability of realization. This means that projects are included in the Outlook with 30 %, 60 % or 100 % of their capacity, depending on the planning phase they are in.

This weighted capacity has the following effect. The 73 plants in the Outlook 2025-2027 have a total solar thermal capacity of 420 MW, but are reduced to 277 MW by the realization weighting. This makes the forecast more reliable because only 30 % of the capacity of systems that are in the early planning phase is included in the Outlook, meaning that only one in three projects need actually be implemented for the prediction to become reality.

Solrico makes the graphics available for general use. You are welcome to use the charts for presentations and communications with your network. The infographic series can be downloaded from this link.

Websites of organizations mentioned in this news article:
Solrico: https://www.solrico.com/
Natural Resources Canada: https://natural-resources.canada.ca/
ProSolNetz: https://www.solarwirtschaft.de/unsere-themen/csp/prosolnetz/ (in German)
Glasspoint Solar: https://www.glasspoint.com/
Gasco: https://www.gasco.cl/