CO2 from the manufacturing industry – “Difficult to avoid, easy to capture”
The global carbon dioxide emissions from the two most emitting manufacturing industries, cement & lime and iron & steel production amounted to about 5.9 Gt CO2, and are vast even compared to the CO2 emissions of global aviation, about 0.7 Gt CO2 in 2013 (based on IEA data). Carbon dioxide emissions from the manufacturing industries, such as cement & lime, iron & steel and pulp & paper are difficult to avoid, because a major part of the emissions is inherent to the raw material used, such as limestone (calcium carbonate).
The power sector is “easy” to decarbonate with solar and wind – we have the solutions already, although the scale of the necessary implementation is vast. A decarbonised power sector can further cut the emissions of heating with heat pumps and road transport with electric vehicles. This highlights the importance of CO2 emissions from the manufacturing industries. Our solution is to enable the industries to capture the CO2 with piloted high-efficiency capture methods, such as an electric rotary kiln or oxy-fuel combustion and utilise the CO2 as a product (average price in Finland 91 €/t, 2017) as such or further refine it into fuels and chemicals with the lowest carbon footprints. An electric rotary kiln can help decarbonate other applications as well, such as lithium production for batteries.
Carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) is also an effective in climate change mitigation, when the used electricity has low emissions.
