Greenhouse Gas Mitigation in the Energy-Intensive Heavy Industry

Dear Colleagues,

Energy-intensive heavy industry is the foundation of our modern society, and is the essential component of all product value-chains transforming natural sources into intermediate products for the Technosphere. A sustainable and resilient industrial network of basic raw materials ensures the security and prosperity of the global economy. Nevertheless, large greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may occur during the procedure of such transformations. Their mitigation is an outstanding challenge of the near future. Toward this end, science must offer its hand to industrial stakeholders in finding a way toward tackling climate change.

Several governmental bodies and NGOs fund comprehensive and multi-disciplinary projects in the field of GHG mitigation. For example, IN4climate.NRW is a nationwide unique platform of the federal state of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) in Germany commenced by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization, and Energy (MWIDE). It represents a place for stakeholders from industry, science, and politics working together on the development of innovative strategies for a climate-neutral industry. SCI4climate.NRW abbreviates “Scientific Competence for a sustainable Industry”, and comprises six leading research institutes in a scientific competence center supporting decisions in politics and industry under the umbrella of IN4climate.NRW.

The overall goal is not only to support industrial transformation in NRW, but the results and innovations developed are also communicated across national borders to foster international discourse and cross-border cooperation projects.

Therefore, SCI4climate.NRW invites researchers, industrial stakeholders, and politicians to publish their scientifically based communications on GHG mitigation in energy-intensive industrial processes. We plan to include the following topics relating to heavy industry (not an exhaustive list):

• Main topics
  • Key technologies and infrastructure;
  • Products and value-chains: efficiency, sufficiency, and consistency;
  • Scenarios and pathways of transition;
  • General economic conditions and business models;
• Sub-topics
  • Environmental, technical, and/or economic evaluation/review of technological innovations (key low-carbon technologies such as H₂, CCU, and heat and electricity storage in industrial applications);
  • Industrial ecology/symbiosis of industry parks (the economy of environmental impacts of tight symbiosis between different production procedures such as waste heat valorization or CCU/cross-industrial approaches);
  • Scenario assessment (context scenarios for trends in mid–long-term projections of changing material and energy demand);
  • Industry and value-chain models for prospective analysis of change-related impacts (changing energy and material demands of industrial sectors);
  • Effects of circular economy (e.g., recycling of waste into secondary intermediate products vs. upcycling, potentials in digitalization, effects of new product design);
  • Effects of changing value chains (e.g., missing side products, substitution effects);
  • Description and analysis of economic and regulatorily requirements for low-carbon technologies and products;
  • Social acceptance of key technologies and/or low-carbon solutions;
  • Etc.

Dr. Balint Simon
Prof. Dr. Stefan Lechtenböhmer
Guest Editors

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• heavy industry
• climate change mitigation
• technology assessment
• life cycle assessment
• material flow analysis
• scenario assessment
• industrial symbiosis
• industrial ecology models
• circular economy
• key technologies