#CleanTech
It sounds almost too simple. Take iron powder, burn it, capture the rust, add hydrogen, and turn it back into fuel. No waste, no direct emissions, just a circular loop of clean energy powerful enough to heat entire factories. That’s exactly what RIFT is building: a technology that could crack one of the toughest problems in the energy transition. Because while solar panels and wind turbines grab the headlines, it’s industry; food, chemicals and materials that account for over 40% of global CO2 emissions. And for most of them, there’s no viable clean alternative. Until now.
Founded in 2020 by TU Eindhoven graduates Mark Verhagen, Vincent Seijger, and Lex Scheepers, RIFT (Renewable Iron Fuel Technology) emerged from years of university research into metal fuel technologies. The three founders saw iron fuel as a missing link in the energy transition and set out to bring it from lab to market.
RIFT’s mission is to decarbonize energy-intensive industries by providing Iron Fuel Technology, a clean, circular fuel for district heating, industrial processes, and electricity plants. Iron fuel enables companies to produce clean energy in the form of hot water, steam, or air, replacing fossil fuels with zero direct emissions from combustion.
Energy-intensive industries are responsible for more than 40% of global CO2 emissions, with industrial heating alone making up a massive share. For nearly half of industrial parties, there is no feasible alternative to fossil fuels. The high power and temperatures these industries require make decarbonization uniquely difficult. Current alternatives like electricity, biomass, and hydrogen all face significant barriers: high costs and space- and grid constraints resulting in low economic feasibility for large-scale implementation. The need for a low-emission, cost-effective, and scalable solution is urgent.
RIFT uses iron powder as a circular fuel to power industrial boilers and generate heat. When the iron fuel is burned, it turns into rust, which is then transported back to RIFT’s production plant, where hydrogen converts it back into iron fuel. This closed loop means zero waste and no direct emissions from combustion.
The technology has the potential to become cheaper and more feasible to implement than hydrogen, biomass, and electricity for industrial use. For their first commercial project, RIFT expects to achieve a CO2 footprint of just 65 kg CO2/MWh, significantly better than gas at 243 kg CO2/MWh and comparable to or better than the best sustainable alternatives available today.
At commercial scale, a single iron fuel boiler system could save 8,800 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year compared to gas. Serving just 1% of the EU industrial boiler market, RIFT could reduce CO2 by 5.6 million tonnes annually, equivalent to 3.5% of the Netherlands’ total emissions in 2020.
RIFT’s primary beneficiaries are industrial companies that are heavily reliant on gas-fuelled boilers and currently have very few viable options to decarbonize. These are businesses that need to reduce their emissions to remain competitive and compliant but lack the infrastructure or economics to switch to hydrogen or full electrification.
Beyond industry, society as a whole benefits. By enabling the decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors, RIFT contributes directly to a cleaner energy future and helps safeguard the continuity of businesses that would otherwise face existential risks from rising carbon costs and tightening regulations.
Without RIFT, a significant part of the energy-intensive industry simply cannot decarbonize their production processes. The transition toward a clean energy system would take longer, and the risk of more extreme climate change would grow. RIFT’s iron fuel technology fills a gap that no other commercially available solution currently addresses, providing a low-cost, low-emission fuel that works with existing industrial infrastructure and doesn’t require the massive capital investments that alternatives demand.
RIFT has the potential to fundamentally transform how fossil-fuel-reliant industries generate heat and energy. Beyond being used as fuel, iron powder can also serve as a cost-effective medium for storing and transporting energy, a critical capability for a future energy system built on renewables. If proven at scale, the technology could reshape industrial energy markets across the EU and beyond, accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels in sectors that have long been considered too difficult to decarbonize.
Technology Readiness Level (TRL), which proves the technology works and is scaled up to achieve impact. RIFT’s direct and indirect CO2 footprint per MWh of iron fuel energy produced.
A key risk is lower than expected circularity of the iron fuel, which could increase indirect CO2 emissions and raise the cost of heat. Longer distance transport of iron powder could also add to the environmental footprint. The technology is dependent on the availability and cost of waste hydrogen, and changes in CO2 emission pricing or fossil fuel costs could affect the economic incentive for industrial players to switch. RIFT is actively mitigating these risks through ongoing research, feasibility studies, and continuous monitoring.
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