Technological barriers on the path to industrial electrification

While electrification promises more sustainable growth and a reduced environmental impact, global industry continues to rely strongly on fossil fuels, primarily due to their cost advantage over electricity and the pre-existing fossil fuel reliant production processes in place. Low margins and lengthy investment cycles add to the industrial de-carbonisation challenge.

What you will learn:

• Industrial activity has high electrification potential. Most sectors that use fossil fuels for heating processes could instead switch to mature, commercially available, electricity-based technologies such as heat pumps or electric boilers.
• Where fossil fuels are used as a raw material (or feedstock) for chemical reactions, electrification is a less viable option. The chemicals, cement, and steel sectors produce a large amount of process emissions from the use of fossil fuel feedstocks. Here, other de-carbonisation tools, like energy efficiency improvements, low-carbon hydrogen, and carbon capture are likely to be necessary.
• Using recent research on industrial de-carbonisation, we have updated our baseline forecasts and scenario responses for electrification across industry. For example, we reduced the 2050 chemicals sector electrification rate in our baseline and Net Zero scenario, as its high feedstock reliance will constrain its ability to electrify.