Vattenfall - Abatement potential

Abatement potential for the industry sector

In addition to the efficiency improvement under BAU, there are a number of abatement opportunities. These vary across different types of industries, but have a total potential to limit emissions in 2030 to 16 Gt CO₂e, which implies abatement opportunities of about 6 Gt CO₂e compared to BAU emissions. The four important abatement opportunities are:

• Increased use of electric motor-drive system (abatement potential of 1.2 Gt CO₂e)
• Use of capture and storage (CSS) (0.6 Gt CO₂e)
• Feedstock substitution (0.7 Gt CO₂e)
• Co-generation (0.3 Gt CO₂e).

Additional technical potential exists, such as CCS retrofitting, but at higher cost levels. The feasibility of achieving industry sector abatement is high relative to other sectors. This has partly to do with the fact that it is relatively easy to track and follow up emissions in the industry sector and that the build-up of the sector allows a focus on industrialized countries. There is, however, a risk that competition distortion issues could arise if a homogenous approach is not taken across countries. In the industry sector, the sub-sectors cement and steel are the main drivers of emissions. In the mapping of the abatement potential, these two sectors have been approached in a bottom-up way. The rest of the industry sector has been treated as a residual, except for industrial non-CO₂ greenhouse gases, which are treated separately. Hence, the underlying assumption is that cement and steel together have roughly average abatement potentials.

The cement sector

The cement manufacturing process consists of three main steps. In the first step, the raw material is prepared. The second step is the clinker making, which is the most CO₂-intensive and accounts for all process emissions and more than 80 percent of emissions from fuel combustion. In the third step, the process is finished. Current emissions from the cement sector are 1.6 Gt CO₂e. Global cement production is expected to more than double by 2030. An especially fast production growth is expected in China, but also in other parts of the developing world, including the Transition economies. This development is driven by urbanization, development of infrastructure and strong GDP growth. Increased efficiency will mean that in the period 2002 to 2030 the emissions will increase with only 22% to about 2 Gt. This emission reduction is expected to be driven primarily by shift to a pre-heater/pre-calciner process in China; a process shift which has been successfully introduced and implemented in Japan, which now is the country with the most efficient clinker production globally. For the cement sector we have found abatement possibilities using conventional technologies of 0.9 Gt CO₂e and 0.3 Gt CO₂e through the development and use of new technologies. There are three important conventional technologies:

• Clinker substitution is a process where the clinker component of cement is reduced by substituting slag, fly ash and pozzolan to avoid the CO₂e-intensive process of limestone calcination.
• Fuel substitution implying use of natural gas, biomass or waste instead of coal and heavy oil.
• Enhanced energy efficiency based on existing technologies for basic material and production can make a large difference, especially in developing countries and transition economies.

The most important new technology is carbon capture and storage (CCS). There are several different methods to capture and store CO₂, showing different characteristics in the areas of covered emission scope and cost implications. In general, CCS in the sector is an expensive process with costs ranging from € 25 to over € 80 per tonne CO₂.

The steel sector

The steel sector accounts for about 1.6 Gt CO₂e. Approximately 30 percent of these are indirect, arising from energy consumption. There are two main production methods in the steel industry: the Basic Oxygen Furnace method (BOF), which accounted for 64 percent of the 2002 production, and the Electric Arc Furnace method (EAF), which accounted for the rest of the production. The latter method is slightly more CO₂ efficient than the first. The global production of steel is expected to double by 2030, with three-quarters of the growth in China. In Europe OECD and the USA, the production is expected to decline with 22% and 29% respectively until 2030. BAU efficiency improvements based on process switching, as well as other conventional technologies, is expected to curb 2030 emissions to approximately 2.5 Gt CO₂e. Conventional technologies can provide an abatement potential of 0.4 Gt CO₂e beyond the BAU improvements. Techniques of injection of pulverized coal and oxygen fuel injections are likely to reduce emissions with approximately 0.31 Gt CO₂e. Thin slab casting and co-generation technologies are also expected to contribute, together with a couple of other technologies. New technologies can provide additional abatement of 0.4 Gt. About half of this potential comes from CCS, and half from smelt reduction, which is a process of integrating preparation of coke with iron-ore reduction to reduce energy use at the iron production stage. Thirdly, a process called direct casting, which integrate the vesting and hot-rolling of steel into one step, thereby reducing the need to reheat before rolling, is expected to reduce emissions by 0.03 Gt CO₂e. After accounting for these reductions of the CO₂e-emissions, the level of emissions originating from the steel industry is expected to be 1.7 Gt in 2030. That corresponds to an increase of five percent since 2002.

Read more

Emissions in the power sector, business-as-usual

Central assumptions & major uncertainties