Thermal Management Systems for a Sustainable Future

The ROI of thermal management

Often, building owners, managers or even design engineers just aren’t aware that their facilities are heating and cooling at the same time while using separate systems. They don’t see the hidden flows of energy or the heat being ejected on one side of the building while another system works hard to generate new heat. This “leakage” of energy that’s already been paid for is an avoidable cost, funding waste instead of efficient performance. 

But when people learn that a thermal management system can significantly reduce both emissions and operating costs, sometimes the next assumption they make is that it will be too expensive or too difficult to implement. In reality, thermal management systems that manage heating and cooling can be up to 400% more efficient than traditional systems, creating both cost savings and decarbonization.  

Often, the cost of moving to a thermal management system can achieve full payback of the incremental system cost in just a few years through avoided energy costs and improved efficiency, even before factoring in emissions reductions and sustainability goals. There is no tradeoff, investments like these can have multi-faceted returns, reducing emissions and saving money at the same time. 

Starting small: lessons from Organon

One of my favorite examples comes from Organon, a global pharmaceutical company focused on women’s health. Their largest manufacturing site in Oss in the Netherlands has a complex mix of processes, utilities and office space. It’s exactly the kind of environment where a thermal management system can make a big difference. 

Their sustainability lead, Stan Van Hastenberg, did not start with a mega-project. He started with good, old-fashioned detective work. First, the team looked at basic energy-saving measures. Then, they broadened the lens to the longer-term energy transition and the role of their thermal energy system. 

One major opportunity they found was in their compressed air system. The compressors needed to be cooled, and that cooling was generating a lot of excess heat that had historically been blown into the air. By introducing two heat pumps, they were able to cool the compressed air more efficiently and feed the captured heat back into their central heating system. The result was a reduced reliance on gas-fired boilers, lower energy use and a big step toward their goal of climate neutrality by 2035, all by rethinking how they managed and reused heat.  

The Organon team is now applying similar thinking in their office buildings, pairing heat pumps with an aquifer thermal energy storage system in the soil to provide heating in winter and cooling in summer. Those steps have created momentum for bigger projects. 

Harnessing heat for a sustainable future

Buildings — the spaces where we live, work, learn and play — will remain central to our lives and are one of the biggest opportunities for decarbonization. The most important step is to begin: start a project, learn from it, then scale. 

The technology we need for efficient thermal management systems is available today, and the business case is strong. When a system can be up to four times more efficient than traditional setups, creating both cost savings and decarbonization, there are few reasons not to make the change.  

The challenge, and the opportunity, is to rethink how we treat heat: not as waste to be thrown away, but as a valuable resource that we can recapture, redistribute and reuse. When we implement the technology to do that, we cut energy costs, reduce emissions and build more resilient operations on the path to a net-zero future. 

Listen to this Healthy Spaces podcast episode to learn more about how to harness heat with thermal management systems.