Abstract
A large body of literature deals with issues related to monitoring of industrial energy use and CO2 emissions, assessment of the potentials of low-carbon technologies and the development of long term scenarios. However, in these assessments knowledge gaps and large uncertainties continue to exist. More analysis can improve the evaluation
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of past energy and climate policies and help to develop policies for the future. Primarily, our understanding of current and past industrial energy use needs to be improved. Furthermore, historical findings of industrial energy use need to be better integrated with the projections of long-term industrial energy use to quantify the potentials of improving energy efficiency. Finally, the technical and economic potentials of other low-carbon technologies need to be studied in order to understand to which extent they can contribute to CO2 emission reductions in the industry. In this thesis, the opportunities of the industrial use of biomass and application of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) are studied in relation to the potentials for energy efficiency improvement. For these technologies, most analyses quantify the potentials for a specific industrial process only and only few of them quantify the sector level potentials of technologies by covering as many countries as possible. These knowledge gaps form the starting points of our research where we address three research questions related to industrial energy use and CO2 emissions: (i) What is the current industrial energy use (based on energy use data and production volumes available at sector and plant level) and what are the short-term energy efficiency improvement potentials in industry in OECD and non-OECD countries based on best practice technologies? (ii) Which rates of annual energy efficiency improvements did the industry sectors achieve in the past and to which extent can energy efficiency technologies accelerate the rates of improvement in future? (iii) Which industry sectors have the largest technical and economic potentials for CO2 capture and storage (CCS) and biomass use and to what extent can these technologies contribute to the reduction of industrial CO2 emissions? The thesis provides for the first time a compilation of benchmark curves for a substantial number of sectors. For those sectors producing numerous products (e.g., iron and steel sector), the analysis is complemented by developing Energy Efficiency Index (EEI) values which is an indicator relating a sector’s total final energy use according to the international energy statistics to its energy use if all of its processes were operated at the level of BPT. This combination of methodologies allows to provide estimates of current energy use and the energy saving potentials for sectors which are often excluded from such analysis. Specific to the chemical and petrochemical sector, we analyzed its current and BPT energy uses by estimating EEI values based on two approaches. For various industry sectors, our research quantifies the short term potentials of energy efficiency, but both analyses are subject to uncertainties and therefore data quality needs to be improved for target setting and country comparisons. The thesis provides valuable information for the industry sector with regard to the technical and economic potentials of energy efficiency technologies, CCS and biomass use. As opposed to literature which often focuses on generic process designs, the thesis quantifies the potentials at sector level by covering a large share of industrial fossil fuel demand and the related CO2 emissions. The research also identifies the R&D focus areas and the policy needs required to develop these technologies as well as the extent to which energy efficiency technologies, CCS and biomass can jointly contribute to meet the goals of ambitious climate policies for the industry sector. The sector level analyses, however, need to be improved and supported by plant level analysis since we rely on various assumptions and generic data.
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