Industries like cement, steel, chemicals, and refining are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, largely due to their reliance on fossil fuels for high-temperature heat and specific chemical processes. While renewable energy sources like solar and wind are crucial for decarbonizing electricity generation, tackling industrial emissions requires a broader set of technologies. As of April 2025, several key decarbonization strategies beyond direct renewable power generation are gaining traction, driven by climate goals, policy support, and technological advancements.
1. Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS)CCUS technologies capture CO2 emissions from industrial sources (like cement plants or steel mills) or directly from the air. The captured CO2 can then be permanently stored underground in geological formations or utilized to create other products, such as building materials or synthetic fuels.
- Current Status: Globally, there are dozens of operational commercial CCUS facilities applied to industrial processes, fuel transformation, and power generation, with hundreds more projects in development. Momentum has increased, with announced capture capacity for 2030 growing significantly.
- Applications: CCUS is vital for sectors where emissions are hard to abate directly, such as cement (where CO2 is released from chemical processes, not just fuel combustion) and steel manufacturing. It also enables low-carbon hydrogen production from natural gas (blue hydrogen).
- Challenges: High costs, the need for extensive transport and storage infrastructure, regulatory frameworks, and public acceptance remain key challenges for large-scale deployment. Coordinating investment across the capture, transport, and storage value chain is crucial.
Hydrogen produced using renewable electricity (green hydrogen) or natural gas with CCUS (blue hydrogen) can replace fossil fuels in high-temperature industrial processes and serve as a clean feedstock for chemicals like ammonia and methanol.
- Current Status: Global hydrogen demand is growing but still dominated by traditional uses in refining and industry, produced primarily from fossil fuels without carbon capture. Low-emission hydrogen production is less than 1% but growing. Significant policy support (e.g., in the EU, India, US) aims to scale up green and blue hydrogen production and use.
- Applications: Key uses include replacing coal and gas in steelmaking (Direct Reduced Iron processes), providing high-temperature heat for industries like glass and ceramics, and producing chemicals.
- Challenges: Costs (especially for green hydrogen), scaling up electrolyzer manufacturing and renewable electricity supply, infrastructure for transport and storage, and creating demand in new applications are major hurdles. Cluster models, where production and use are co-located, are being explored to mitigate transport issues.
Replacing fossil fuel-fired boilers and furnaces with electric heating technologies powered by clean electricity can significantly reduce emissions.
- Technologies: Options include electric resistance heating, induction heating, electric arc furnaces, microwave heating, and industrial heat pumps (especially efficient for lower-to-medium temperatures).
- Current Status: Electrification is mature for low and medium-temperature (<200°C) heat and some specific high-temperature processes. Technologies like electric kilns for cement and crackers for chemicals are under development for very high temperatures. The share of electricity in industrial energy consumption is projected to rise significantly by 2050.
- Challenges: High capital costs for retrofitting or replacing equipment, the need for robust grid infrastructure, managing variable electricity prices, and the technical maturity of solutions for very high-temperature (>1000°C) processes remain barriers.
Biofuels, synthetic fuels (e-fuels), and bio-based feedstocks offer alternatives to fossil fuels, particularly in sectors difficult to electrify directly.
- Types:
Biofuels: Derived from organic matter (e.g., agricultural waste, used cooking oil). Examples include biodiesel, renewable diesel (HVO), bioethanol, and biomethane.
Synthetic Fuels (e-fuels): Produced using low-carbon hydrogen and captured CO2 (e.g., e-kerosene, e-methanol, e-methane) or nitrogen (green ammonia).
* Drop-in Fuels: Compatible with existing engines and infrastructure, often blended with conventional fuels (e.g., Sustainable Aviation Fuel - SAF, renewable diesel).
- Current Status: Biofuel use is established, particularly in transport, with biomethane also gaining traction. SAF production is growing, driven by aviation sector targets, but still represents a small fraction of jet fuel demand. E-fuel production is nascent.
- Applications: Crucial for decarbonizing aviation, shipping, heavy-duty transport, and providing feedstock for the chemical industry.
- Challenges: Ensuring feedstock sustainability (avoiding competition with food), scaling up production, cost competitiveness with fossil fuels, and developing infrastructure for newer fuels like e-fuels and ammonia.
Optimizing industrial processes, improving energy and material efficiency, and adopting circular economy principles (reuse, recycling, extending product life) can inherently reduce emissions and resource consumption.
- Technologies & Approaches: Digital tools like AI, IoT sensors, and digital twins can optimize energy use and material flows. Adopting novel low-carbon production routes (e.g., new cement chemistries, hydrogen-based steelmaking) and increasing recycling rates are key.
- Impact: Energy efficiency improvements and material efficiency along the value chain are crucial components of industrial decarbonization pathways. Digital technologies alone could reduce industrial emissions by 5-10% currently. Circular economy approaches aim to reduce primary material demand and waste.
Governments worldwide are implementing policies and funding mechanisms to accelerate industrial decarbonization. Examples include the EU's Clean Industrial Deal and Innovation Fund (including an Industrial Decarbonisation Bank), the US Inflation Reduction Act's tax credits for CCUS and clean hydrogen, and India's National Green Hydrogen Mission. These initiatives aim to lower costs, stimulate demand for clean products, fund large-scale projects, and streamline regulations. Significant private investment is also flowing into these technology areas.
Achieving deep decarbonization in industry will require deploying a combination of these technologies, tailored to specific regional and sectoral contexts, alongside supportive policies and continued innovation.