High grade waste heat should be recovered as a first step whenever possible.  Examples may include high temperature wastewater, air compressor waste heat, process cooling applications, etc.  This form of heat recovery will be the cheapest to implement with most projects attaining a justifiable return-on-investment.  In the context of an electrification roadmap, it reduces the total load required.  As a result, operational and capital costs for future steps are reduced, potentially eliminating the need for new substations.

 This step will focus on recovering low grade waste heat to offset fossil fuels, which is often accomplished with a heat pump.  Any available waste heat is leveraged in a manner that requires far less electricity than the equivalent heat from an electric boiler.  These projects often reduce operational expenditure as electricity is efficiently used to offset fuel requirements.  While many projects fail to provide an attractive return-on-investment with current fossil fuel prices, the economics shift to favorable when full decarbonization is the true end-goal of a facility.