Page 102 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 2

Industrial Decarbonization:
The Role Of Material Efficiency Strategies

Then, why have industrial emissions increased so far, and are still expected
to increase? This is because this energy-intensive sector differs from the other
sectors in some respects and this makes it to be classified as a “hard-to-abate”
sector. International competitiveness pressure due to its openness to trade
structure, cost sensitivity and carbon leakage risk, technical and economic
dependencies resulting from long-term investment, and the problem of
stranded assets, being closely related to a large number and variety of goods
and services used in many stages of the supply chain are some of these
features (Ahman and Nilsson, 2015; Loftus et al., 2015; Wesseling et al, 2017;
Bataille et al, 2018; Bataille, 2020, IEA, 2020b).
Undoubtedly, it is very difficult to find the main determinant that makes
the reduction of industrial emissions difficult. However, it is quite obvious
that these factors are largely associated with the production structure of the
industrial sector. For this reason, as seen in Figure 2, it can be argued that
the main factor that makes the industry sector “hard-to-abate” is that the
sub-sectors of this sector are usually part of an energy-intensive production
process, and they meet most of their energy need from fossil fuels (Allwood et
al, 2010; ME, 2019; Davis et al, 2018; Bataille et al, 2018; Bataille, 2020). To be
more specific, especially unlike the energy sector, the industry sector requires a
high temperature to extract and process materials. Therefore, wind, solar and
other renewable energy sources, which can be considered alternatives for the
energy sector, have a limited use in the industry. In this regard, the potential
alternatives to fossil fuels used in industry are currently neither economic nor
available. To illustrate, the main reason why cement (and iron&steel) production
is energy-intensive is that it requires a high temperature from fossil fuel
combustion, and involves chemical reactions that result in process emissions.
Various stages of cement production lead to emissions. The most important
component of cement is clinker, and it is obtained by heating certain minerals.
While the chemical processes (calcination) in the furnace during the cement
production process result in process emissions, direct and indirect emissions
occur due to fossil fuel combustion and electricity used, respectively. Half the
emissions from cement production result from chemical processes (process
emissions), while 40% of it directly come from fossil fuel combustion, and the
rest is associated with the purchase of electricity and transport (Baumert et al,
2005; Feldmann and Kennedy, 2021; Fransen et al, 2021).

c. Mitigation Options in Industry

Factors that contribute to emissions are not the same for all sectors and
might significantly differ. Thus, the success of the sectoral strategies for
emission mitigation is closely related to the extent these differences are

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