Industrial firms produce all the materials and products we rely on every day, ranging from raw steel and cement to finished buildings, vehicles, and consumer goods. In doing so, the industrial sector consumed 43 percent of the world’s final energy in 2020. To meet ambitious climate goals, nations will need to transition industry to low- or zero-emissions processes.

Energy Innovation has created the Industrial Zero Emissions Calculator (IZEC) for you to test different strategies to reduce industrial emissions and explore their resource requirements. The IZEC is an easy-to-use, customizable tool to assess the demands of different industrial zero emissions strategies. The IZEC incorporates publicly available data to model five regions: the U.S., China, European Union, India, and the world as a whole. You can choose the energy sources used for industrial heat, specify energy and material efficiency improvements, determine methods of forming chemical feedstocks, and more.

Built-in scenarios focus on particular strategies such as direct electrification, green hydrogen, bioenergy, or fossil fuel use with carbon capture and storage (CCS), as well as a mixed scenario. Outputs include non-feedstock and feedstock energy use, electricity demand, hydrogen demand and electrolyzer capacity, bioenergy land use, industrial CO2 emissions, CO2 stored underground from CCS, and the required capacity of zero-carbon electricity sources.

The IZEC is available in two forms, as an Excel tool and in the web browser (below). The simplified browser version showcases the built-in scenarios and summarizes their results, while the Excel tool allows you to customize the exact industrial decarbonization strategies you prefer. Also check out the accompanying IZEC report, which walks through the tool’s capabilities and shares results and insights for the U.S. industrial sector.