Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bauer, Fredric
• Hansen, Teis
• Nilsson, Lars J

Titel

Assessing the feasibility of archetypal transition pathways towards carbon neutrality – A comparative analysis of European industries

Ist Teil von

• Resources, conservation and recycling, 2022-02, Vol.177, p.106015, Article 106015

Ort / Verlag

Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •We identify archetypal transition pathways in four industries.•We assess the feasibility of pathways in terms of conditions and potential.•The maturity of pathways varies significantly.•Sensitivity to learning and branching points key for future policy. Analyses of the future for manufacturing and heavy industries in a climate constrained world many times focus on technological innovations in the early stages of the value chain, assuming few significant changes are plausible, wanted, or necessary throughout the rest of the value chain. Complex questions about competing interests, different ways of organising resource management, production, consumption, and integrating value chains are thus closed down to ones about efficiencies, pay-back times, and primary processing technologies. In this analysis, we move beyond this to identify archetypal pathways that span across value chains in four emissions intensive industries: plastics, steel, pulp and paper, and meat and dairy. The pathways as presented in the present paper were inductively identified in a multi-stage process throughout a four-year European research project. The identified archetypal pathways are i) production and end-use optimisation, ii) electrification with CCU, iii) CCS, iv) circular material flows, and v) diversification of bio-feedstock use. The pathways are at different stages of maturity and furthermore their maturity vary across sectors. The pathways show that decarbonisation is likely to force value chains to cross over traditional boundaries. This implies that an integrated industrial and climate policy must handle both sectoral specificities and commonalities for decarbonised industrial development.