PepsiCo heats Belgian homes with vapor from a Lay's chip plant in Veurne

Belgian real-estate developer Ion was looking for sustainable heating alternatives for a new residential area in the city of Veurne when it received a proposal from a surprising source: PepsiCo. The food and beverage company suggested a collaboration between the community and a nearby potato chip plant operated by Lay's, its subsidiary.

The idea: the vapor from cooking up to 20 tons of potatoes per hour could heat a water circuit, replacing natural gas with a more environmentally efficient process — while simultaneously providing PepsiCo with a valuable carbon offset. The project, named Lay's Factory Home Heating, is the result of a group effort from PepsiCo, the community of Veurne, Belgian companies Noven, which designed the technology, and Fluvius, which runs the utility grid in the area.

The system delivers heating in radiators and tap water; it reached its first homes sometime in the first half of 2022 and tops out at 500 households upon completion in the next ten years. For PepsiCo it helps meet targets to cut carbon emissions by more than 40% by 2030 against a 2015 baseline and reach net-zero by 2040 — 'but also helps us give back to the local communities where we operate,' said Wim Destoop, vice president and general manager of PepsiCo Northwest Europe.

A chip plant frying 20 tons of potatoes an hour is, in effect, a power station venting into the air — the heat source for a whole neighborhood was already running next door.

Every party's cost line up: Ion needed green heat for new homes, Veurne got infrastructure, and PepsiCo could book the emissions reduction toward its own 2030 and 2040 targets.

The carbon offset is what makes the deal self-interested for the emitter rather than a charity project — the waste stream literally improves PepsiCo's sustainability numbers.

It needed an orchestrator on each side — Noven designing the technology and Fluvius running the grid — so the heat could actually travel from fryer to radiator.

Waste heat becomes a product the moment a buyer stands next door: wire the emitter, the developer and the grid operator into one deal, and carbon accounting makes the emitter a willing seller.

The project won the Europe, Middle East, and Africa category of Fast Company's 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards. Destoop said that while it started as a convenient intersection of needs in one area, with the right conditions and interested parties the process could be replicated elsewhere.