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.
Resources
The Industrial Zero Emissions Calculator
Image of vehicle being assembled by Lenny Kuhne via Unsplash.
Built-in scenarios in the Industrial Zero Emissions Calculator 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.
Click here to use the Industrial Zero Emission Calculator Tool
Industrial Zero Emissions Calculator Report
Arc Welding Robots. Image CC BY 3.0 by RobotWorx
Different approaches to decarbonizing the industrial sector would involve different mixes of these resources. Policymakers need a way to assess the resource demands of different industrial zero-emissions strategies (including heating and non-heating energy requirements, chemical feedstocks, and methods of green primary steel production) with a transparent, customizable, easy-to-use tool. This report details assumptions behind the tool and walks through the tool’s main results for the U.S.
Click here to download the report
Industrial Zero Emissions Calculator Excel Tool
The Excel version allows users to define custom scenarios with a high degree of granularity. It also provides five preset scenarios that explore the ramifications of different strategies, such as heavy reliance on direct electrification, green hydrogen, bioenergy, or CCS.