Research area
Over 20% of emissions are produced by the cement, steel, and chemical industries, which rely on fossil fuels to generate power and heat or to carry out industrial processes. Decarbonizing industry could significantly reduce its emissions while supporting economic development, infrastructure improvement, and better living standards.
Industrial and chemical processes that produce many common products—from soap to fertilizer to steel and cement—currently need fossil fuels to provide energy and heat. They also may depend on hydrocarbons such as coal or petroleum as raw materials used to carry out industrial processing. The resulting greenhouse gas emissions make industry a high priority for decarbonization.
Industry is the leading hard-to-abate sector of the economy due to the deep interdependencies between industrial processes and fossil fuels. For example, steelmaking has traditionally used coal to chemically process iron ore and combustion of fossil fuels to generate the high required heat. Decarbonization requires deploying new techniques both for extracting the iron from the raw ore and for powering the transformation of molten iron into steel.
MITEI funds MIT research on four key decarbonization pathways for hard-to-abate industries:
MITEI-funded researchers have also examined cost performance, techno-economics, and lifecycle emissions of industry decarbonization strategies. For MITEI members, we have built technology dashboards that synthesize MIT analyses across numerous research projects to provide a comprehensive perspective on topics such as decarbonization of steelmaking or cement production.
MITEI supports analyses and potential solutions for decarbonization of hard-to-abate industries such as steel, cement, and chemical production.
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Ammonia production generates more CO2 emissions than any other industrial chemical process. But without ammonia, we can’t feed the world’s population. The challenge is finding new and affordable ways to produce ammonia using whatever resources are available in different parts of the world.
