Key points
Energy-intensive industries are under pressure to achieve their greenhouse gas reduction targets, both internally and externally, and time is running out. Decarbonisation, like Rome, wasn’t built overnight and significant changes take time.
For instance, industrial companies' internal targets for reducing emissions often include achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Meeting these goals will only be feasible if industrial energy users take action immediately to meet their near-term targets.
Why is the pressure heavier on heavy industries to decarbonise? Two reasons:
- Energy-intensive industries have a massive carbon footprint. According to the IEA, direct industrial CO2 emissions are responsible for 26% of total global emissions, roughly 8.7 GT CO2/year. Industries like steel, cement, petroleum refining and chemicals are responsible for the bulk of these emissions.
- Heavy industry is not currently taking all opportunities to decarbonise processes: 78% of the industrial sector’s energy demand is not electrified. This means that a majority of industrial processes’ equipment, like heaters, furnaces, steam boilers, compressors, are unnecessarily being powered by fossil fuels.
Process electrification reduces the carbon footprint of industrial energy users
One of the key reasons process electrification is essential to heavy industries’ green strategy is because the potential impact is huge. That’s because electricity is the best vector for decarbonisation, slashing direct CO2 emissions at end use, and it will keep on improving as the share of generation with low emissions factor grows (e.g., renewables, hydro).
Plus, process electrification is already a proven way to reduce industries’ carbon footprint without sacrificing production or performance. In addition, while there can be technological challenges in moving from combustion-based systems to electrical ones, up to 50% of site energy can be electrified today using existing technology, so industries don’t need to postpone their battle with climate change.
Which industrial processes can be electrified?
Process electrification is a way to drive a wide range of industrial and manufacturing processes by using electricity rather than fossil fuel combustion. The two main categories of process electrification are:
- Process heating: This is the heat that powers manufacturing, such as furnaces, steam boilers, and gas-fired heaters. Process heating can be electrified. For example, in the steel industry traditional blast furnaces/basic oxygen furnaces can be replaced by electric arc furnaces and the chemical & refining industries replace distillation column steam reboilers with electric reboilers.
- Motion/machine drive: This category is related to powering equipment like compressors and pumps. For example, in the oil and gas industry, this can involve replacing turbines/engines with variable-speed electric motors in compressor packages (
ie.g. gas pipelines, CO2 re-injection, liquefaction, etc.), among other solutions.
The rewards of process electrification go beyond decarbonisation
Research shows that process electrification for industrial companies is not only good at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There are other compelling reasons to electrify industrial processes:
- Reinforcement of business continuity: Green electrification and on-site microgrid can help mitigate production shutdown risks.
- Improved energy efficiency of electrified process: Electrifying processes is almost always more energy efficient than using fossil fuels. For example, drying methods are responsible for an estimated 10 to 25% of industrial energy consumption. Using heat pumps could bring an up to 80% energy savings and an 80% decrease in carbon emissions compared to conventional natural gas burners.
- Better control, driving higher efficiency: Industrial equipment has a long lifespan, often lasting decades. Making the switch from fossil fuels to electrification is also an opportunity to upgrade equipment’s technology and components to ensure enhanced operational performance, such as improvements in the yield of more valuable products, quality and throughput.
- Lower maintenance costs: Industrial equipment has a long lifespan, often lasting decades. Maintenance costs for electric and hybrid industrial machines are often lower because component life is longer and there is less wear and tear. Fluctuations in steam quality or firing of heaters and gas turbines induce stress on the equipment, necessitating additional inspections and maintenance interventions.
Enablement of remote operations: A high degree of reliability is an absolute prerequisite for remote operations. Electrified operations result in fewer mechanical components that are more prone to failure, e.g., electrifying a steam reboiler means that the steam control valve, valve actuator and steam trap are no longer required, neither is the potential for CO2 corrosion of the reboiler itself.
- Participation in grid flexibility mechanisms: Increasing electrification creates new loads on the power system, but can also help balance electricity grids by offering flexibility to grid operators. It can bring grid flexibility through demand-side management using energy efficiency and demand response.
Process electrification led to a reduction of 100k tCO2e/year in emissions for a Brazilian FPSO
Let's examine a real-world application of process electrification.
A Brazilian floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) company successfully decreased its annual carbon emissions by roughly 100k tCO2e by reconfiguring its operations – transitioning from gas turbine compressors and gas engine water pumps to electrically powered equipment.
Initially, the plant's estimated power usage was anticipated to surge from 80MW to 150MW following the incorporation of additional electrical equipment. Process Electrification led to a reduction in CO2 emissions, capital and operational expenditures, and a much greater level of efficiency, reliability, and availability of the entire system.
The evidence is clear – net-zero ambitions are possible, but only if everyone plays their part. As the biggest contributors to CO2 emissions, industry players have a huge role to in the decarbonisation journey, and the road to net-zero starts with process electrification.
