Industrial heating accounts for around 14% of UK emissions, yet approximately half of the energy used in UK industry is lost as waste heat. The report, ‘Unlocking thermal energy: Capture, storage and re-use of industrial waste heat’, published today, finds that capturing and re-using this heat could help decarbonise industry, reduce overall energy demand, improve productivity, and provide new, local sources of heat for communities. The report proposes an approach to thermal energy efficiency based on heat cascades, where high temperature waste heat is captured at source and reused at progressively lower temperatures. As industry makes the switch from fossil fuels to cleaner alternatives, we have a huge window of opportunity to integrate systems to capture and reuse industrial waste heat into future infrastructure. This would support the development of heat capture, transport and storage technologies along with the necessary regulatory and financial frameworks to enable investment.