Holistic view of CO2 reduction potential from energy use by an individual processing company

John J. Fitzpatrick and Paul Dooley

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2017, vol. 77, issue C, 336-343

Abstract: CO2 emissions from fossil fuel energy and its potential influence on climate change is one of the biggest environmental sustainability challenges. The process industries are a major contributor to CO2 emissions and thus have a major role to play in trying to greatly reduce them. This paper focuses on individual processors and what they can achieve in moving towards zero CO2 emissions form energy use. It uses a number of case-studies to highlight technical approaches that may be applied to reduce CO2 emissions, such as gas turbine CHP and renewables. It argues that these approaches need to be looked at in a broader holistic sense and highlights the limitations of these approaches for providing major reductions in CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the dominant neo-classical economic system continuously drives economic growth which often counteracts any reductions achieved. There is only so much an individual processor can be expected to do, as there are factors and barriers outside the direct control of an individual processor that influence their carbon footprint, such as cost and availability of energy sources. Many of these factors are socio-economic, thus modifications to the dominant neo-classical economic paradigm are required to facilitate and move individual processors towards majorly reducing their carbon footprints form energy usage.

Keywords: Sustainability; Process industries; Energy; CO2 emissions reduction; Holistic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032117305439
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:77:y:2017:i:c:p:336-343

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2017.04.038

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().