Saving energy is crucial for all sectors following the new framework presented by the European Commission to drive continued progress towards a low-carbon economy. Many studies focus on the residential sector, transport and energy-intensive industries, but there is a lack of tools to help decision makers in non-energy intensive industry (NEI). This paper presents the first bottom-up energy model developed for this sector. This prospective modeling enables us to analyze the impact of heat recovery using heat pumps (HP) in industrial processes up to 2020 in the French food and drink industry (MD), the biggest NEI sector. The technology has high potential in this sector and may be eligible for Energy Saving Certificates. Our model determines the differentiated cost for energy savings in response to incentive policies under the ESC mechanism at a 4-digit level of NACE classification. Sensitivity analyses also show how gas prices and electricity carbon footprints impact on HP penetration. Our study of this particular sector shows that the model could be a useful decision-making tool for assessing potential energy savings and could be extended to other sectors of NEI industry for more efficient subsectoral screening. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.