Norwegian startup raises $6M to fix this sneaky source of energy waste

Mikal Løvik began his career in Norway’s offshore oil and gas industry, where he noticed a big but largely hidden source of energy waste: electric heating cables. Service vessels and drilling rigs used the cables to prevent equipment from freezing, but they always ran on full blast, even when it wasn’t necessary to keep surfaces so toasty.

Every major industrial sector around the world uses systems like these, as do cities and buildings to melt snow from sidewalks. The cables are either off or on, hot or cold. That means much of the heat they create is often lost to the air.

This inefficiency led Løvik and his partners to launch Eqon, a startup based in Stavanger, Norway, that makes what he likened to dimmer switches for lightbulbs. The software-enabled devices can dial down the use and temperatures of existing heating cables to reduce electricity demand — in turn curbing emissions, particularly if a system draws power from diesel generators or a fossil-fuel-heavy grid.

On Wednesday, Eqon said it had closed a $6 million seed round led by Azolla Ventures, a U.S. investment firm that focuses on early-stage climate startups. The funding will allow Eqon to build more of its novel devices and market itself to American companies, which represent the world’s second-largest market for electric heating cables, after Europe, Løvik said.

“Industrial heating is one of the most stubborn decarbonization challenges on the planet — it accounts for a massive share of global emissions and has seen almost no innovation at the control and efficiency layer,” Af Hernandez, a principal at Azolla Ventures, said in a statement. ​“This is precisely the kind of overlooked, high-impact technology … that Azolla is delighted to back.”

Overall, Eqon estimates its product can reduce the energy consumption, and thus CO₂ emissions, of electric heating cables by up to 80%, though the results can vary by project.

Løvik, who is the startup’s CEO, said he sees a large market opportunity for the niche solution — particularly as industrial firms grapple with rising electricity costs and limited power supplies. These problems could become even more pronounced as factories in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere move to electrify their gas-fired boilers and heaters, further straining power systems.

“When you dim things down, you remove the energy peaks, which is a big constraint on the grid,” Løvik said of the heating cables. Lowering those spikes in demand can free up capacity for manufacturers to add new factory lines or upgrade facilities, he said.

Globally, sales of electric heating cables totaled over $1.8 billion in 2025, according to a MarketsandMarkets report that Eqon paid for. The oil and gas industry represented about a third of those sales, followed by chemical plants, commercial and residential buildings, power plants, and food and beverage factories.

Løvik said his team began experimenting with designs for their technology in 2018, using a household freezer, heating cables, and light dimmers to simulate an industrial setting. The hardware the company makes today resembles an internet router and can plug directly into the electrical cabinets that power heating cables.

“If we can know what the weather is and read the temperature from sensors, we can reduce output to only like 4% to 5%, rather than 100%,” he said. ​“That’s the big game-changer here. We can be precise.”

Eqon now has about 30 clients, primarily in Norway, that have helped validate the energy-saving technology. One of the firms is Nordic Pharma, which makes omega-3 supplements for global consumers from a waterfront factory above the Arctic Circle. The manufacturer boils cod liver oil, then moves it to further processing in the plant via pipelines. Electric heating cables help maintain critical process temperatures and keep the oil from spoiling along the way.

Nordic Pharma said it has seen a 20% drop in the cables’ energy consumption since installing Eqon’s devices, which have also helped to alert the manufacturer to potential problems, such as frozen pipes and over- or underheated oil, that can disrupt production.

“Why hasn’t anyone done this before, and why is this new? It’s because these cables are installed as the last part of an [industrial] project; they just work until they break,” Løvik said. ​“We can save companies a lot of money on their energy bills and prolong the lifetime of existing lines, so we see that as very attractive to the industrial market.”