Ongoing urbanization and the battle with smog pollution in China has created a huge market for generating heat from industrial waste that has attracted foreign investment and technology.

"China's market for industrial waste heat recovery and utilization is maturing faster than it was three years ago when we started such projects," said Wu Song, executive director of China Operations with Johnson Controls Inc's Building Efficiency Business.

As a global multi-industrial company with established core businesses in the automotive, building and energy storage industries, Johnson Controls is focusing on China's waste heat industry. Its billions in market value is "hard to calculate specifically", Wu said.