How aligned are industry strategy and government policy for the decarbonization of energy-intensive process industries?

Figures & data

Table 1. Decarbonization solutions for EPIs. Loosely based on Bashmakov et al. (2023), Bauer et al. (2022).

Solution	Type	Applicability (main sectors)	Comment
Electrification	Energy input	All industrial sectors	Becomes a direct or indirect solution by the means of substituting thermochemical processes but also part of other solutions such as CCS and hydrogen
Hydrogen (green or blue)	Energy and/or resource input	Refineries, chemicals, fertilizer, iron and steel	Hydrogen requires significant increases in renewable electricity production (green), or reformation of natural gas (with CCS), but also associated infrastructure for transport and storage
Carbon capture (utilization) and/or storage (CCS/CCU/CCUS)	End-of-pipe solution if combined with storage, but can also generate new resources if combined with hydrogen (e-fuels)	All industrial sectors. CCS is especially relevant in cement industry that have few other options and CCU in petrochemical industry	Capture potential depends on flue gas composition. If used on biogenic flue gases it can enable negative emissions. Associated compression and storage requires significant increase in electricity production, grid capacity, transport and storage solutions
Bio feedstock	Energy and/or resource input	All industrial sectors	Scalability and resource availability is a limiting factor in most cases, but can be significantly important when combined with other solutions
Energy efficiency	Energy input (reduced)	All industrial sectors	Important, but insufficient for net-zero emission as standalone solution

Table 2. Summary of alignment across the cases.

	Denmark	Germany	Netherlands	Norway	Sweden	UK
Target alignment	Intermediate (0.5)	Intermediate (0.6)	Intermediate (0.5)	High (1.0)	High (0.7)	High (0.8)
Temporal alignment	Intermediate (0.4)	Low (0.15)	Low (0.25)	High (0.75)	Intermediate (0.4)	Intermediate (0.5)
Solution alignment	Intermediate (0.45)	Intermediate (0.5)	Intermediate (0.5)	Intermediate (0.55)	Intermediate (0.6)	Intermediate (0.6)

Figures note level of alignment from 0 (complete misalignment) to 1 (full alignment). See method section for details.

Bashmakov, I. A., Nilsson, L. J., Acquaye, A., Bataille, C., Cullen, J. M., de la Rue du Can, S., Fischedick, M., Geng, Y., & Tanaka, K. (2023). Industry. In P. R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. A. Khourdajie, R. V. Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, & J. Malley (Eds.), IPCC, 2022: Climate change 2022: Mitigation of climate change. Contribution of working group III to the sixth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157926.013

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Bauer, F., Hansen, T., & Nilsson, L. J. (2022). Assessing the feasibility of archetypal transition pathways towards carbon neutrality – A comparative analysis of European industries. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 177, 106015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.106015

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