ENERGYNEST is a Norwegian company that builds thermal energy storage systems for factories. Its technology is designed for production sites where steam or thermal oil is part of everyday manufacturing and where cleaner energy often has to fit around equipment already in place.
The company is part of the EIC Scaling Club’s Batteries & Energy Storage market group. Its approach to energy storage centres on industrial heat: keeping thermal energy produced from electricity available for use inside production sites.
According to ENERGYNEST, their solutions also have financial benefits – they kick in only when the electricity price is lower than the gas price, storing heat for later use.
The area ENERGYNEST works in is sizeable. The International Energy Agency notes that industries relying mainly on low-temperature heat and steam account for around 70% of global industrial energy use and were responsible for nearly 3 gigatonnes of direct energy-related CO₂ emissions in 2023.
For those sectors, cleaner electricity matters most when it can replace the fossil-fuelled heat used in production.
A system built around heat
ENERGYNEST’s core technology is the ThermalBattery™, a modular storage unit made from steel and thermal concrete. Heat is transferred into the solid material and later released through pipes inside the unit. In practical terms, the heat is stored physically in the material rather than through battery chemistry.
In a 2026 interview, CEO Alex Robertson explained the logic in plain terms:
“We turn energy, electricity, into heat and then store it as heat,” adding, “we never go back to electricity.”
If the final use is heat, the system keeps the energy in that form instead of converting it back again.
Founded in 2011 by Professor Pål Bergan and Øivind Resch, ENERGYNEST began with the aim of making “high-temperature thermal energy storage industrially viable at scale.”
Since then, the company has moved from early development and pilot work into commercial projects and larger systems that use electricity to produce process heat.
Working inside existing factories
Factory heat systems are closely tied to how production already runs. New equipment has to fit the site’s temperature range, pressure levels, operating schedule, and existing heat infrastructure, because steam or heated oil is often part of the production process itself.
For ENERGYNEST, that fit happens at more than one level. Inside the storage unit, the piping is adapted to process-specific requirements such as the heat-transfer fluid, pressure, and temperature. Around the unit, the company’s power-to-heat systems can combine storage with electric heaters and, where needed, additional equipment such as steam generators or heat exchangers.
Where the technology is being used
At fertiliser producer Yara’s facility in Norway, ENERGYNEST’s installation helps balance steam supply and demand. The system stores thermal energy by condensing high-pressure steam and later generates low-pressure steam when demand rises, reducing the amount of excess steam that would otherwise be dumped. According to a later ENERGYNEST update, the installation enables annual savings of 12 GWh of electricity imports and 6,000 metric tonnes of indirect CO₂ emissions.
A larger power-to-heat project is being implemented with adhesives manufacturer tesa at its Hamburg plant. The system is designed to convert renewable electricity into high-temperature steam and store heat so the plant can draw on it when needed. tesa expects it to cover around two-thirds of the site’s annual steam demand and reduce CO₂ emissions by around 4,600 metric tonnes per year.
In Germany, ENERGYNEST has also worked with thin-film technology company LEONHARD KURZ on a system that connects electric heating and thermal storage to existing heated-oil infrastructure. The project is expected to cover more than 70% of the heat demand for one production line and reduce annual CO₂ emissions by over 700 metric tonnes.
The examples use the same principle in different ways. At Yara, the value is steam balancing. At tesa, the focus is larger-scale steam generation from renewable electricity. At KURZ, it is replacing part of a production line’s fossil-fuelled heat with electricity and storage. All three show thermal storage being used inside operating or planned industrial sites, where the test is whether it fits the work the factory already has to do.
Why the heat route matters
ENERGYNEST has secured backing for its growth. In 2021, the company announced a €110 million investment agreement with Infracapital to support international expansion and finance complete energy storage projects for industrial clients.
Since then, ENERGYNEST has continued to focus on commercial deployment. The company overview lists multiple power-to-heat systems in operation and under construction and says its thermal storage systems are designed for more than 30 years of operation, ensuring energy savings in the long term.
For factories still using fossil-fuelled heat, that long operating life matters. ENERGYNEST is building for factories where new energy equipment has to earn its place inside the heat infrastructure that production already depends on.
About the EIC Scaling Club
The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.
The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.
The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.
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