A breakdown of the strategy, the five industrial sectors it impacts most and how it allots funding to reduce manufacturing’s environmental impact.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a comprehensive report outlining its intentions to urgently reduce industrial emissions in American manufacturing.

Announced by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, the Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap outlines four areas of focus in the Biden administration’s effort to reduce emissions and recommends investment opportunities to achieve deep decarbonization. The government also announced $104 million in funding to boost new technologies that aid decarbonization.

“America’s industrial sector is critical to our economy and daily lives, yet it currently accounts for an enormous portion of greenhouse gas emissions and is particularly difficult to decarbonize,” said Secretary Granholm.

According to the DOE, America’s industrial sector accounted for one-third of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions in 2021. Much of that is made up from five energy-intensive subsectors: iron and steel; cement and concrete; food and beverage; chemical manufacturing; and petroleum refining. These industries represent approximately 51 percent of energy-related CO2 emissions in the U.S. industrial sector and 15 percent of total U.S. CO2 emissions.

“The facts are, we can’t live without the industrial sector, and yet we can’t live with the climate impacts and pollution impacts—carbon pollution in particular—that the sector produces,” said Granholm during the DOE-hosted roundtable where the roadmap was announced. “We now have unprecedented federal support for the strategies, technologies and techniques that are in this roadmap. We are on the cusp of an historic clean energy boom which will bring a whole swath of new jobs in decarbonization.”

Decarbonization Pathways

The roadmap identifies four ways to significantly reduce emissions across these five subsectors and claims that, when combined with other approaches, could mitigate almost all the annual CO2 emissions. These pathways can be applied across all industrial subsectors and can deliver both near-term and future Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction. The four pathways are:

Energy Efficiency: This foundational decarbonization strategy is the most cost-effective option for GHG emission reductions in the near term and involves several initiatives that individual manufacturers should implement.

• Strategic energy management optimizes performance of industrial systems.
• Management and optimization of thermal heat from manufacturing processes, heating, boilers and combined heat and power (CHP) sources.
• Smart manufacturing and advanced data analytics to increase energy productivity.

Industrial Electrification: Using low-carbon electricity from both grid and onsite renewable generation will be critical and includes electrification of process heat using induction, radiant heating or advanced heat pumps; electrification of high-temperature processes typically used in iron, steel and cement making; and replacing thermally driven processes with electrochemical processes.

Low-Carbon Fuels, Feedstocks, and Energy Sources (LCFFES): Use low-and no-carbon fuel and feedstocks to reduce associated emissions for industrial processes. This will require the development of fuel-flexible processes, the integration of hydrogen fuels and feedstocks into industrial applications and the use of biofuels and bio feedstocks.

Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS): This means using carbon dioxide (CO2) captured during generation to make value-added products or storing it long-term to avoid release. The three ways of implementing this include post-combustion chemical absorption of CO2; optimizing advanced CO2 capture materials that improve efficiency and lower the cost of capture; and developing processes to use captured CO2 to manufacture new materials.

Roadmap Recommendations

The report makes several recommendations to get American Industry moving along the decarbonization path, and this is where the $104 million in funding comes into play. The recommendations are:

• Help advance early-stage research, design and development.
• Invest in parallel pathways of electrification, efficiency, low carbon fuels, CCUS and alternative approaches.
• Support and scale up demonstration testbeds to accelerate and de-risk deployment.
• Address process heating, as most industrial emissions come from fuel combustion for heat.
• Examine the impact of carbon reduction technologies on the supply chain.
• Conduct modeling/systems analyses, expanding the use of lifecycles and techno-economic analyses.

Each of these key recommendations will require a combination of public and private investment. To this end, the DOE published its Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). Projects funded under this FOA will drive transformational technology and innovation to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions. The funding revolves around six central themes:

Decarbonizing Chemicals: Focusing on unit operations, including advanced separations and advanced reactors, alternative production and process heating technologies to reduce carbon impacts from the production of high-volume chemicals.

Decarbonizing Iron and Steel: Advancements that enable decarbonization in ore-based or scrap-based iron and steelmaking operations, and that convert other existing iron and steelmaking ancillary and thermal processes to use clean fuels or electricity.

Decarbonizing Food and Beverage Products: Technologies that decarbonize process heating operations within the food and beverage sector.

Decarbonizing Cement and Concrete: Next generation cement formulations and process routes, use of low carbon fuels and carbon capture technologies.

Decarbonizing Paper and Forest Products: New paper and wood drying technologies, and innovative pulping and paper forming technologies.

Cross-Sector Decarbonization Technologies: Innovation in low temperature waste-heat-to-power, thermal energy storage and industrial heat pump technologies.

For companies looking to apply, the submission deadline for concept papers is Oct. 12, 2022, while the submission deadline for full applications is Dec. 20, 2022. Applicants can view the full funding announcement on the DOE’s Energy Efficiency & renewable Energy Funding Opportunity Exchange website.

Download and read the full 241-page Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap here.

Watch a recording of the U.S. Department of Energy Industrial Decarbonization Roundtable here.