Hybrid Industrial Heating Startup NOC Energy Aims to Decarbonize Cement and Glass Plants With a Bolt-On Electric System

You’re almost certainly familiar with hybrid gas-electric cars, but have you ever heard of a hybrid cement factory or glass manufacturing plant? Chances are you haven’t—nearly every heat-reliant industrial facility operating today still runs entirely on fossil fuels. That status quo could shift sooner than you think, though: one startup has engineered a new way to integrate electric heating into existing fossil fuel-powered plants. Just like a hybrid car, this system lets manufacturers cut energy costs while immediately lowering their overall fossil fuel consumption.

“We’re bringing hybrid technology to industrial manufacturing processes,” Carlos Ceballos, co-founder and CEO of NOC Energy, explained in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. “Most industrial operators are ready to move toward electrification, but they’re not prepared to fully phase out fossil fuels overnight. As the world navigates the energy transition, they need the flexibility to pick whichever energy source delivers the lowest cost at any given time.”

NOC Energy’s modular electric heating system is designed to be bolted directly onto existing fossil fuel-powered facilities, requiring no full overhaul of current infrastructure. The heat generated by the system can be routed straight into glass kilns or integrated into any step of the cement production workflow. If electricity prices spike unexpectedly, plant operators can simply shut off NOC’s system and return to full fossil fuel operation with no disruption to output.

What makes NOC’s solution particularly notable is its ability to deliver industrial-grade heat at temperatures as high as 1,200˚C, and the company is currently refining its design to reach 1,500˚C. Reaching these extreme temperatures has long been a major barrier for non-fossil heating systems; green hydrogen can hit these marks, but it remains prohibitively expensive for widespread industrial use today. The high-temperature industrial electrification space is still young, with few competitors—one notable rival is Electrified Thermal Solutions, a past participant in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield.

NOC Energy recently closed a $2.7 million seed funding round, the company announced exclusively to TechCrunch. The round was led by 360 Capital, with additional participation from venture firms SOSV and Desai VC.

While most of NOC’s early customers are expected to opt for the hybrid model, the system can also operate fully electric for facilities that want to go 100% fossil-free. A core feature of the design is its ability to store heat for multiple hours at a time, letting manufacturers take advantage of electricity price fluctuations: they can run the system and store heat when power prices are low (usually when wind or solar generation is peaking) and draw on stored heat when electricity costs rise, cutting overall energy bills.

Two core design features enable both flexible hybrid operation and energy price arbitrage. The first is the system’s induction heating mechanism, which works on the same basic principle as the induction stoves found in millions of homes worldwide. Induction heating uses copper coils that generate a magnetic field when electric current passes through them. This magnetic field triggers rapid vibration in atoms within nearby ferrous metals like steel, which generates intense heat.

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In NOC’s system, the copper induction coils heat dense steel spheres packed inside large 2.5-meter (roughly 8-foot) wide ceramic containers. The copper coils wrap around the outside of these containers, which are themselves surrounded by thick heat-retaining insulation. When heat is needed for production, electricity runs through the coils to warm the steel spheres. Blowing air through the packed spheres pulls the generated heat out, and it is then piped directly to where it is needed—whether that’s a glass kiln or a production stage at a cement plant.

NOC’s approach is not the only way to generate extreme heat via electricity. Resistive heaters, the same technology used in everyday toasters, can reach these temperatures. But the hotter resistive heaters run, the faster they degrade. Ceballos notes that specialized high-temperature resistive heaters only last around 12 months when operating at 1,000˚C, and that lifespan drops to just three months at 1,200˚C.

NOC’s copper induction coils completely avoid this lifespan issue, because they never come into direct contact with the extreme heat they generate. That’s the key advantage of induction heating for this use case: the coils are embedded in half a meter (roughly 20 inches) of insulation, so they stay at room temperature even as they emit electromagnetic waves that heat the steel spheres deep inside the container.

The thick insulation also enables NOC’s long-duration heat storage capability. The company can size its system to match a customer’s desired storage window: for facilities that need to store heat for longer periods, NOC simply stacks additional container modules and adds more steel spheres to the setup.

So far, NOC has run a refrigerator-sized pilot system for more than 15,000 hours of testing. The company has now built two full-sized demonstration systems: one for a glass manufacturer and one for a cement producer, both based in France. Both demonstration units are scheduled to go online in May.

Ceballos says the hybrid model gives manufacturers much-needed security amid ongoing energy market and geopolitical uncertainty. “Going hybrid lets operators de-risk their operations as they plan for the future,” he said. “Amid today’s ongoing geopolitical instability, that flexibility is incredibly attractive.”