The brief from the UK Energy Research Centre and the Aldersgate Group with modelling from the University of Leeds indicates that industrial decarbonisation through electrification would increase the sector’s power use by 78% between 2024 and 2050.
However, without a clear plan to accommodate for this increase in electricity use, 42% of large industrial sites would experience power constraints in 2030, increasing to 77% in 2050.
Most constrained would be dispersed sites and the most affected industrial sectors would be glass, iron and steel, non-ferrous metals and food and drink.
Industrial decarbonisation is considered fundamental to delivering net zero and driving future economic growth.
Peter Taylor, Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems in the Schools of Earth and Environment and Chemical and Process Engineering at Leeds and co-author of a new study on decarbonisation options for industry, says that industrial decarbonisation is challenging compared to other sectors.
“For the UK, if we don’t decarbonise industry, we won’t meet our climate change targets and ultimately industry will move elsewhere because, in the long term, people will be looking for products made in a clean, green way and if our industry can’t produce these then it will become the industry of the past, not the industry of the future.”
The UK’s £217 billion ($1.25 billion) manufacturing sector, which directly employed 2.6 million people in 2024, could deliver more than 40% of the greenhouse gas reductions through electrification to help reach the UK’s net zero target.
Thus investment in critical grid infrastructure is vital to enable this change, states the policy brief, calling on government to ensure that electricity networks are strengthened according to these new demands.
In particular, policymakers must ensure that the pattern of future industrial electricity demand is considered in analysis to inform distribution network strengthening and that anticipatory investment in networks is enabled.
To inform network operator scenarios, the government needs to provide clarity on industrial electrification and the policies that will support it and data needs to be strengthened to create an accurate picture of future needs.
Without this policy intervention, network constraints could seriously hinder industrial decarbonisation, the brief concludes.
The University of Leeds study, which was published in the journal Joule, found that the decarbonisation of industrial sectors is likely to require a combination of bespoke technologies.
Technologies with medium to high maturity, such as carbon capture and storage or fuel switching to hydrogen or biomass could save nearly 85% of emissions on average in most industrial sectors.
Low-maturity electric technologies – such as such as electric steam crackers used to produce petrochemical products – can theoretically decarbonise from 40% to 100% of direct sectoral emissions including from energy-intensive processes.
Further research, development, and demonstration is therefore needed for low- and medium-maturity technologies accompanied by large-scale infrastructure development to accelerate the decarbonisation of industrial sectors, the paper indicates.
