Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• A Finnish brewery partnered with a climate-tech company to pilot a sand-based thermal energy storage system for beer production.

• The innovative solution used hot sand in silos to generate steam, potentially cutting energy costs by 70 percent and carbon emissions by 90 percent.

• Scientists believe sand battery technology could be scaled up for various industrial applications, from food processing to power generation.

Brewing beer on a large scale requires large amounts of hot steam for fermentation. Rather than relying on fossil fuels, which often come at a high cost and a detriment to the environment, one Finnish brewery is now using sand to brew its wares.

Nokian Panimo, the second-largest microbrewery in Finland, partnered with TheStorage, a Finnish climate-tech company that specializes in sand-based thermal energy storage systems, to pilot a cheaper and more energy-efficient way to brew their beer—via sand battery.

In January, a three-year-long process became reality when the first industrial-scale pilot plant using moving sand for heat transfer technology was installed at the brewery for real-world testing, according to TheStorage. The plant produces steam for the brewery’s production lines—without the use of fossil fuels—via sand that is circulated between two silos.

The two-silo system moves cool sand from a cold silo to an electric heater, which warms the sand up to 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 degrees Fahrenheit). The hot silo then stores the sand, which retains heat that can be released on-demand as steam or thermal oil, depending on industrial needs. By using this two-silo system, steam can be delivered with up to 10 times more efficient heat transfer efficiency than other static storage systems, according to TheStorage.

Essentially, the sand battery stores energy in the form of heat and enables renewable electricity to be integrated with applications that require high temps—think of it essentially like your toaster taking electricity and turning it into heat, explains Briggs White, PhD, president and founder of Keystone Ascent, a strategic advisory firm with a focus on sustainable energy.

Compared to other forms of renewable energy like solar and wind, which rely on variable elements, thermal energy storage in the sand allows for a sort of a continuous flow of heat when you want it. The sand absorbs and stores the energy, which you can then tap into when you need it, explains White. The system provides an industrial advantage, he says.

This could cut energy costs by up to 70 percent and carbon emissions by up to 90 percent, according to TheStorage.

“Producing steam without fossil fuels is a major step toward carbon-neutral production,” brewery production director Vesa Peltola said in a press release.

Currently, the technology is not commercially available on large scales, but White says that developers appear bullish on scaling it. “I don’t see a reason why if it can work well and be cost-effective at this moderate scale for a brewery why it couldn’t theoretically be scaled up to a very large scale,” he says. “But that would need to be demonstrated at a pilot scale and then at an even larger scale.”

Other communities are attempting to scale sand-battery technology, which can have many usages, supporting energy storage and converting to commercial use. One Finnish town uses a sand battery to help heat the community.

Both sand and concrete are attractive for thermal energy storage because they’re very low cost, but sand has an advantage over concrete in that you can make an even higher temperature. The higher the temperature of the material, you potentially need a smaller amount of it, which means it could be a lot cheaper—and more useful—for creating the type of heat necessary for industrial application, White says.

“I’ve seen that some people in the field are actually thinking about repowering coal power plants using a thermal energy storage technology, so I think sand would be one of the potential mediums to be considered,” White says. For example, electricity from renewable energy would heat up the sand in the coal plant and that heat would raise steam, like how a coal power plant runs today. Then the heat would be used to make electricity and put it back out onto the grid.

“In essence, you would take a coal power plant, take off the whole coal burning part, and you would have like a gigantic battery basically for renewable electricity to support the grid, which would be a very big application,” White explains.

On a more intermediate scale, this technology could be an opportunity to make industrial processes lower carbon or higher efficiency, though it wouldn’t be a complete solution, White says.

Other ways to integrate this sand battery technology would be, of course, breweries and the food processing industry—which also requires a lot of heat. It could also be an interesting application for the pulp and paper industry for drying paper, during chemical processing and polymer manufacturing, and even potentially supporting industrial-scale laundry services.

“Companies have wanted to decarbonize for years, but viable solutions simply weren’t available. Finally, renewable energy generation can meet industrial heat demand in a way that’s both ecologically sound and economically practical,” Timo Siukkola, CEO of TheStorage, said in a press release.

Even for brewing beer.