The green transition of industry – An introduction to IndustryPLAN

Abstract

The green transition of industry has an essential role in meeting the Paris Agreement targets. Transition strategies should integrate a balance between energy efficiency, electrification, and renewable energy. Focus should be on enabling industry to play an active role in the integration of variable renewable energy sources and the sector-coupling needed for the utilisation of excess heat. Industry in the European Commission's net-zero emission scenarios such as EU 1.5 TECH in “A Clean Planet for all” is based on a top-down methodology with the risks of overinvestments, blind investments, non-concrete general pan-industrial investments, and unrealistic implementation rates. This paper introduces seven guiding principles and a freeware tool, IndustryPLAN, to open the “black box” of industry, quantify such strategies and apply them to EU-27 + UK. The tool enables the user to conduct country-specific, sector-specific or aggregated European analyses of climate mitigation measures by implementing best available technologies, innovative measures and technologies, electrification, shift to hydrogen-based processes, and excess heat utilisation. Also, resilience against fluctuating fuel, electricity and technology prices can be analysed to illuminate geopolitical or supply chain issues. The combination of the guiding principles methodology and the IndustryPLAN tool identifies at least 30% short-term feasible final energy demand savings and possible full decarbonisation with a 100% renewable energy supply for industry.