Textile finishing processes require high amounts of hot water and hot air—partly with temperatures up to 200 ℃. To date the heat is mostly generated by fossil fuels. Waste heat is mainly released into the atmosphere, only in some cases it is recovered by heat recovery systems and reused in the production or other (external) processes. To reduce the CO2 emissions of the textile finishing industry, technologies to gradually electrify and reduce/reuse waste heat move into focus. In other industries the use of industrial or high temperature heat pumps increases to generate heat and reduce or either substitute fossil fuels. This approach may also be interesting for the textile finishing industry. The literature research and analysis presented in this paper has shown that few research projects have already worked on first approaches to integrate heat pumps—predominantly in dyeing processes. In addition to the technical challenges researchers also analyzed the economic aspects. But when taking a closer look on the studies, it becomes clear that these mostly focus on individual (sub-)processes, individual heat flows (e.g. only preheating fresh water) or temperatures below 100 ℃. To integrate heat pumps at a larger scale in the textile finishing industry and reduce fossil fuels, further research is needed especially with a focus on a more holistic approach. The aim should be to design, simulate and analyze the technical as well as the economic aspects of the integration of heat pumps in a whole textile finishing process—from the material preparation up to the drying and heat setting process with the most effective interconnections possible, instead of focusing on individual (sub)processes only. In order to continue working on options to implement heat pumps in the textile finishing industry, a PhD research project focuses on the development of a holistic approach as the one described above.