Re-Industrialisation and Low-Carbon Economy—Can They Go Together? Results from Stakeholder-Based Scenarios for Energy-Intensive Industries in the German State of North Rhine Westphalia

Stefan Lechtenböhmer, Clemens Schneider, María Yetano Roche and Samuel Höller
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Stefan Lechtenböhmer: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy and Environment, Döppersberg 19, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany
Clemens Schneider: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy and Environment, Döppersberg 19, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany
María Yetano Roche: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy and Environment, Döppersberg 19, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany
Samuel Höller: Umweltbundesamt, Deutsche Emissionshandelsstelle (DEHSt), Bismarckplatz 1, 14193 Berlin, Germany

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 10, 1-26

Abstract: The German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is home to one of the most important industrial regions in Europe, and is the first German state to have adopted its own Climate Protection Law (CPL). This paper describes the long-term (up to 2050) mitigation scenarios for NRW’s main energy-intensive industrial sub-sectors which served to support the implementation of the CPL. It also describes the process of scenario development, as these scenarios were developed through stakeholder participation. The scenarios considered three different pathways (best-available technologies, break-through technologies, and CO 2 capture and storage). All pathways had optimistic assumptions on the rate of industrial growth and availability of low-carbon electricity. We find that a policy of “re-industrialisation” for NRW based on the current industrial structures (assumed here to represent an average growth of NRWs industrial gross value added (GVA) of 1.6% per year until 2030 and 0.6% per year from 2030 to 2050), would pose a significant challenge for the achievement of overall energy demand and German greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets, in particular as remaining efficiency potentials in NRW are limited. In the best-available technology (BAT) scenario CO 2 emission reductions of only 16% are achieved, whereas the low carbon (LC) and the carbon capture and storage (CCS) scenario achieve 50% and 79% reduction respectively. Our results indicate the importance of successful development and implementation of a decarbonised electricity supply and breakthrough technologies in industry—such as electrification, hydrogen-based processes for steel, alternative cements or CCS—if significant growth is to be achieved in combination with climate mitigation. They, however, also show that technological solutions alone, together with unmitigated growth in consumption of material goods, could be insufficient to meet GHG reduction targets in industry.

Keywords: low-carbon industry; reindustrialisation; North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW); stakeholder-based scenarios; trans-disciplinary research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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