Technologies to drive half of net zero emissions target not yet developed – IEA

LONDON (ICIS)–Nearly half of the technologies necessary to decarbonise energy intensive sectors such as chemicals production and meet 2050 carbon-reduction goals are still in development, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.

Current technological innovations are expected to drive 80% of the global emissions savings achieved by the chemicals sector by 2030, under the IEA’s projections of what a path to net-zero emissions by 2050 could look like.

HEAVY INDUSTRIES
The need to decarbonise heavy industries such as chemicals and steel production is as pressing as the more high-profile push to reform the transportation sector, but many of the technologies that are likely to be key to accomplishing that goal remain under development, according to IEA representative Timur Gul.

“We need to decarbonise more than electric cars, we need to do more than just making our way of consuming energy more efficient,” Gul said, speaking at a press conference.

“We will need to tackle emissions in various different other parts of the energy system.

“Many of these technologies are today still demonstration or even prototype stage and by the year, 2050, almost half of the emission savings for achieving net zero emissions by that time will need to come from technologies that are currently under development,” Gul, who heads up the IEA’s energy technology policy division, added.

NEAR-TERM TECHNOLOGIES
Those key technologies largely centre on carbon capture and storage, production and processing of hydrogen and sustainable energy technologies, he added.

Production of chemicals, cement and steel accounted for 2.9bn tonnes of oil equivalent (2,900 Mtoe) in 2019, the equivalent energy usage as the entire US, according to Gul, with global plastics production nearly doubling in the last two years.

The agency projects that the most substantial progress for the sector and other intensive industries through to 2030 will largely focus on efficiency improvements such as electrification of heat processes.

Earlier this month, Austria’s polyolefins producer Borealis announced that it will use a chemical process developed at the University of Ghent, Belgium, to convert waste heat back into process heat.

2030 AND BEYOND
Carbon capture and hydrogen power will play a more active role decarbonising industry after 2030, although electricity consumption in industry is likely to double between 2020 and 2050, the IEA added, while  hydrogen demand in manufacturing is likely to increase from under 1m tonnes/year today to 40m tonnes by 2050.

Fossil fuels are likely to remain a factor in industry through to 2050, with the IEA projecting that 10% of industrial production would be from fossil fuel-consuming production plants, retrofitted with carbon capture technology.

The IEA has advocated carbon capture as a solution for decarbonising heavy industry where new methods such as hydrogen power and electrification may be more difficult, but take-up has been slow so far, especially for low-margin facilities such as cement plants.

The cracking process that is integral to producing the raw materials requires extremely high heats and is very difficult to decarbonise, while the sector is also under pressure to reform production processes to drive the transition to the circular economy.

NET ZERO
The need to reinvent production, as well as the way facilities are powered, is another factor slowing the development of next-generation technologies, particularly during the period of pandemic-driven budget cuts.

“This decade must be both a time of accelerated deployments of the technologies that we have, and … of accelerated innovation to prepare the next generation of clean energy technologies, towards a net zero transition by 2050,” Gul surmised.

Under its net zero model, total fossil fuels in the chemicals sector energy usage mix will fall from 81% to 61% by 2050.

Front page picture source: Sipa/Shutterstock

Focus article by Tom Brown