Abstract
Scientists have reached a consensus that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C necessitates achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across all economic sectors. Numerous research institutes have prepared decarbonization strategies for the global and regional chemical industries, utilizing modeling and systems analysis to identify decarbonization pathways with different combinations of low-carbon technologies. However, technology choices and scenario designs vary widely across studies, which precludes generalizability and complicates the use of data and results by the broader decarbonization scenario modeling community. Given the varied scopes and objectives inherent in different system models, there is no standardized set of technology data for use in decarbonization pathways analysis. A systematic literature review of 27 relevant studies was performed, which found opportunities for improving technology representation, technology readiness, scenario consistency, demand factors, and policy interventions, among other quantitative elements. Only 7 out of 27 reviewed studies investigated all types of mitigation technologies, and only 3 studies included all data elements aligning with the proposed rubric in this paper. Considering these opportunities, this review proposes a comprehensive dataset structure and consistent scenario definitions that can enable more comprehensive, comparable, robust, and replicable net-zero decarbonization scenarios by modelers of the chemicals industry moving forward.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 114831 |
| Journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews |
| Volume | 205 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2024 |
Funding
Regional policy support can further drive CCS and CCU deployments in the chemical industry. The U.S. Section 45Q tax credit that provides a credit of up to $50/tCO2 for permanent geological storage or up to $35/tCO2 for all beneficial uses of CO2 boosts the CCS and CCU investment plans [63]. This amount of carbon credit can effectively incentivize the utilization of CCS technologies for pre or post combustion processes and bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), but maybe not enough for Direct Air Capture (DAC) technologies. In Europe, the EU Innovation Fund provides up to $11.9 billion to support the demonstration of low-carbon innovative technologies and the EU Horizon 2020 had a research and innovation funding for a number of topics including CCS/CCU and other energy system decarbonizations [63].Enze Jin, Sanaz Chamanara, Eric Masanet, and Phillip Christopher acknowledge financial support from the C-THRU project: Carbon clarity in the global petrochemical supply chain (www.c-thru.org). Phillip Christopher and Eric Masanet further acknowledge the Mellichamp Academic Initiative in Sustainability at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for support.
Keywords
- Chemical industry
- Climate change mitigation
- Energy systems analysis
- Industrial decarbonization
- Scenario modeling
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
