VI - Accelerating industry’s decarbonisation
While the sector has seen a steady decrease in emissions since the 1990s, that decline isn’t fast enough. To meet its climate objectives, the EU must accelerate the pace of its industrial sector’s decarbonisation. The Green Deal Industrial Plan supports the development of the innovative processes, state of the art technologies, and outside-the-box ideas – including those highlighted in this chapter – that will help decarbonise industry and accelerate its transition to climate neutrality.
Innovation for green industry
On the process side of the equation, the STEELANOL project has developed a novel way to recycle industrial waste gases. Installed directly into a steel plant, the system captures gases that were once emitted into the atmosphere and converts them into bioethanol, a renewable fuel that can be used to power vehicles. These biofuels could eventually be shipped via the innovative logistics process developed by the CO2NTROL project. The end-to-end solution supports everything from negotiating sustainable transport options to offsetting carbon emissions and identifying the most efficient delivery routes. Industry’s environmental footprint extends well beyond carbon emissions. In addition to other polluting chemicals and gases, it also produces a significant amount of waste, including large amounts of plastics. Instead of heading to landfills, this plastic could be used to produce new plastic products through work carried out by the PULSE project. The project developed circular technologies to pretreat and upgrade liquefied waste plastic. The resulting hydrocarbons can be used to manufacture new plastic products, opening the door to the recycling of nearly 6 million tonnes of industrial plastic waste.
Outside-the-box ideas
When it comes to decarbonising industry, one cannot ignore its substantial energy demand. While it might be challenging to make a single industrial site more efficient, industry tends to operate in clusters. So, why not cooperate? This is the innovative thinking behind the R-ACES project. Knowing that there’s strength in numbers, the project is turning industrial parks and clusters into ecoregions. By facilitating the exchange of surplus energy, making extensive use of renewable energy, and installing shared smart energy technology, R-ACES is confident these industrial ecoregions will see a 10 % drop in emissions. Together, these projects are helping to ensure that Europe’s industrial products don’t cost the Earth.
