25 February 2026

 

For decades, a large amount of electricity has been wasted on factory floors across Europe. Every time a heavy industrial machine slows down — a metal press completing a cycle, a conveyor stopping and starting, or a large industrial mixer ramping down — it generates electricity. In most factories, that energy is not reused. It is dissipated as heat through braking resistors and lost.

This phenomenon is well understood by engineers. Energy recovery (the capture and reuse of electricity generated when machines decelerate) has existed for years, and the principle is already familiar from electric vehicles, where regenerative braking captures energy during deceleration. Yet in industrial settings, the technology has remained a niche solution rather than a mainstream one.

That may now be changing. A Scottish energy technology company, IR Power, says it has removed the practical and commercial barriers that prevented industrial energy recovery from scaling. With electricity prices at historically high levels and manufacturers under pressure to reduce emissions, the economics of capturing wasted energy are being reassessed.

Why industrial energy recovery struggled to scale

Industrial retrofit challenges, downtime risk, capital expenditure barriers

The core challenge has never been whether energy can be recovered from industrial machines. It can. The problem has been implementation.

Traditional solutions typically required extensive custom engineering. Drive systems often had to be modified or replaced, installations could take weeks or months, and production lines frequently had to be taken offline. Upfront costs were high, and manufacturers were expected to carry the performance risk: if the system failed to deliver savings, the investment still had to be justified.

When industrial electricity prices hovered around £50 per megawatt hour, these projects were difficult to justify financially. Even where the technology worked, payback periods were long and operational disruption significant. As a result, energy recovery was often sidelined in favour of measures that were easier to deploy.

What has changed: economics and pressure

Industrial electricity prices, net-zero manufacturing

Two factors have shifted the calculation. First, industrial electricity prices have risen sharply. In the UK and across much of Europe, prices have doubled in recent years, reaching £100 to £150 per megawatt hour. Energy costs are no longer a background concern; they are a board-level issue.

Second, manufacturers face binding net-zero commitments and increasing scrutiny of their operational emissions. Improving energy efficiency is no longer just about cost control. It has become part of long-term competitiveness, regulatory compliance, and corporate credibility.

Against this backdrop, retrofit solutions — technologies that improve existing equipment rather than replacing it — have gained renewed attention. Industrial machines often have lifespans of 20 to 30 years, and replacing entire drive systems can cost millions of pounds. Retrofitting offers a faster route to measurable impact.

IR Power’s approach: standardisation and risk transfer

Retrofit energy recovery systems, performance-based pricing

IR Power is a Scotland- and London-based energy technology company focused on industrial energy recovery through retrofit systems and performance-based commercial models.

The company’s proposition is not based on inventing a new physical principle. Instead, it combines existing energy recovery technology with a redesigned product architecture and a different commercial model.

IR Power has developed standardised, plug-and-play systems that connect to existing industrial equipment without modifying the machines themselves. Installation takes hours rather than weeks and does not require production to stop. According to the company, the systems can be integrated with equipment from any manufacturer, allowing factories to build site-wide energy recovery networks across multiple machines.

Crucially, IR Power has shifted the financial risk away from manufacturers. Its systems are offered on a rental basis with no upfront cost. Customers pay monthly fees only from verified energy savings. If the system does not perform, the customer does not pay.

In a press release on the subject, Richard Bradshaw, Founder and Managing Director of IR Power, describes this as a deliberate inversion of the traditional model:

“For years, energy recovery systems existed but didn’t deploy at scale because they cost too much and put all the risk on customers. We’ve inverted that model completely. Our customers pay zero upfront – no capital expenditure, just operating expense. Installation takes hours with no production downtime. And here’s the key: if our system doesn’t save them money, we don’t get paid; we take all the performance risk.”

How much energy can realistically be recovered

Verified energy savings, industrial electricity costs

According to IR Power, its systems can recover between 10 and 20 percent of total electricity consumption in suitable applications. On large automotive press lines, where machine clusters cycle every few seconds, this can translate into annual savings of £50,000 to £100,000 per cluster at current energy prices.

These figures are not universal. Energy recovery is most effective in motor-driven machinery with frequent start-stop or speed-change cycles. Continuous processes with little deceleration offer fewer opportunities. This means the addressable market is significant but not unlimited.

IR Power’s initial focus is on press applications in automotive manufacturing and construction materials, sectors where cyclical motion is common and energy demand is high. The first commercial deployments with manufacturers in this industry are scheduled for Q1 2026.

From technology to adoption

Industrial uptime, operational resilience

One reason previous solutions struggled was operational risk. In some systems, excess braking energy could overwhelm capacity, causing shutdowns that required manual intervention. IR Power says its design avoids this by routing surplus energy safely to existing waste resistors while continuing to operate.

This focus on reliability is critical. For manufacturers, any technology that threatens uptime is viewed sceptically, regardless of potential savings. By avoiding interference with core processes, retrofit solutions become easier to justify.

The rental model also changes how projects are approved internally. Because costs are treated as operating expenditure rather than capital investment, decision-making can be faster. At the same time, linking payments directly to measured savings aligns incentives between supplier and customer.

A broader shift in industrial efficiency

Energy-as-a-service, risk-sharing business models

IR Power’s approach reflects a wider trend in industrial technology: innovation increasingly lies in deployment models as much as in engineering. This shift can be seen across multiple sectors, where technically mature solutions only achieved scale once commercial and operational barriers were removed. As energy prices rise and climate targets tighten, solutions that are technically proven but commercially awkward are being revisited.

Well-known examples include energy service companies (ESCOs), which finance and install efficiency upgrades in buildings and are paid from verified savings rather than upfront capital; power purchase agreements in solar energy, where companies buy clean electricity without owning panels; and Rolls-Royce’s long-established “power by the hour” model in aviation, which sells engine uptime instead of engines themselves. In each case, the underlying technology was proven, but adoption accelerated only once risk, complexity, and cost were reallocated.

This does not mean energy recovery will become universal overnight. Each factory has its own constraints, and verified performance will matter more than theoretical potential. Manufacturers will want evidence from real-world deployments across different operating conditions.

IR Power says it has deliberately chosen diverse early customers to test the technology before scaling. That cautious approach may help build credibility in a sector where overstated claims have historically undermined trust.

What this signals for manufacturers

Industrial decarbonisation, cost-effective energy efficiency

The renewed interest in industrial energy recovery highlights a broader shift in how efficiency is viewed. Instead of isolated upgrades, manufacturers are increasingly looking for systemic improvements that deliver immediate returns without disrupting operations.

Retrofit technologies that reduce waste, cut costs, and support emissions targets are likely to attract growing attention, particularly where suppliers are willing to share performance risk.

Whether IR Power’s model becomes widely adopted will depend on results over the next few years. What is clear is that a long-acknowledged inefficiency on factory floors is now being taken seriously again — not because the physics have changed, but because the economics have.

In that sense, industrial energy recovery is not a new idea finally being discovered. It is an old one that may, at last, be ready for scale.

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Why this matters

Industrial energy recovery shows how long-established engineering principles can gain relevance when energy economics, climate pressure and risk-sharing business models align. For manufacturers, the question is no longer whether efficiency technologies work in theory, but whether they can be deployed quickly, safely and at scale. As retrofit solutions mature, they may play a growing role in cutting industrial emissions without waiting for wholesale replacement of existing infrastructure.

 

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