AIDRES Final Report, Methodology and results for EU industrial production routes in 2030 and 2050 (D3.1), Supporting document to the EU industrial plants database

The objective of the AIDRES database is to support the EU-27's long-term goal of achieving a fully integrated industrial strategy. It serves as a valuable resource for the European Commission and industries, offering insights into the effectiveness, efficiency, and cost of potential innovation pathways to achieve carbon neutrality in key sectors such as steel, chemical, cement, glass, fertiliser, and refinery by 2050. The database considers the geographical distribution of annual production for these sectors at the EU-NUTS3 regional level. To assess and evaluate production routes, the database utilises process integration techniques to generate reference and future optimal production pathways. This approach provides a quantitative, technical, and multi-criteria estimation of energy demand in Europe's major industrial sectors. The focus of decarbonization efforts includes the substitution of less energy-intensive products, electrification of production processes, adoption of oxy-combustion, carbon capture and storage, utilisation of alternative fuels, and biomass. The database compiles a comprehensive set of information on a per-ton-of-product basis, including energy demand, direct emissions, captured CO2 quantities, and associated investment and operational costs. Scenarios for reference year 2018 and projections for 2030 and 2050, encompassing energy prices, indirect upstream emissions, CO2 allowances, and production shifts, are considered to anticipate operational expenditures and total emissions. Furthermore, the per-ton database is scaled up NUTS3 level based on regional production capacities. This scaling enables the application of the database at EU level for analysing the current state and future evolution of selected heavy industrial sectors. An analysis, based on a specific AIDRES EU mix route use case, indicates a substantial reduction in direct CO2 emissions by 2050, ranging from 85-96% compared to the average emissions from 2015-2019, meeting the EU Fit for 55 MIX scenario CO2 emission reduction targets