A climate neutral Swedish industry – An inventory of technologies

In year 2017, about 27 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in Sweden originated from the industries. This equals to 17,203 thousand tonnes carbon dioxide equivalents. Within the Swedish industry, the four industrial sectors with the largest climate gas release are Iron and steel, Cement, Refineries and Chemicals. This report focuses on these four sectors which together emit 80 percent of the industrial greenhouse gas emissions in Sweden. Each of these sectors have several possible pathways to become climate neutral. In this report some possible pathways are described and discussed.

In order to reach climate neutrality, transformative changes such as new processes and use of new raw material are needed. This is because a vast part of the emissions in all the sectors in question originates from the processes themselves or the use of fossil feedstock, not only from energy use. Many of the options are technically immature and there are many years of development left before they could be implemented in large scale.

Several technical challenges exist which are related to the processes, but in addition, there are several barriers of non-technical nature for the transformation. For example, supply and price of raw materials, uncertain market for new products and even some legal barriers. Furthermore, some of the options require development of infrastructure, for example the electrification of steel and cement production demands strengthening of the electric grids and increased production of renewable electricity.