THE INDUSTRIAL ZERO EMISSIONS CALCULATOR

The report presents the Industrial Zero Emissions Calculator (IZEC), an open-source Excel tool that allows stakeholders to visualize the electricity, hydrogen, bioenergy, and carbon capture and storage (CCS) needs required to achieve zero-emission industry. Focusing on U.S. scenario results, the report argues that direct electrification is the most energy-efficient pathway for industrial heat, while green hydrogen should be reserved for high-value feedstocks and steelmaking due to its inefficiency when burned. It highlights that heavy reliance on bioenergy or fossil-based CCS leads to prohibitive land use or capital costs, respectively. The authors emphasize that combining these technologies with energy and material efficiency improvements is critical to making industrial decarbonization feasible and cost-effective.

• Direct electrification is the most energy-efficient method for providing industrial heat, though it requires significant grid planning. In the U.S., a High Direct Electrification scenario would increase annual electricity demand by nearly 4 petawatt-hours (PWh), representing a 2.4 percent annual growth rate over 30 years to fully decarbonize industrial energy and feedstock use.
• Using green hydrogen for industrial heat is significantly less efficient than direct electrification. Meeting U.S. industrial heat demand via green hydrogen combustion would increase electricity demand by 7.8 PWh, which is nearly double the demand of the high direct electrification scenario and equates to a 3.7 percent annual growth rate over 30 years.
• Heavy reliance on bioenergy for industrial heat and feedstocks is impractical due to extreme land requirements. A High Bioenergy scenario would require the U.S. to dedicate more than 21 percent of its agricultural land to bioenergy crop production, an area 25 percent larger than the state of Texas.
• Decarbonization strategies relying heavily on fossil fuel combustion with carbon capture and storage (CCS) face massive financial hurdles. Such a scenario for the U.S. would require more than $3 trillion in capital investment for the infrastructure needed to store CO2 underground, excluding the energy costs to power the CCS process.
• Energy and material efficiency improvements significantly reduce the resource burdens of any decarbonization pathway. For example, applying 25 percent energy efficiency and 15 percent material efficiency improvements to the High Direct Electrification scenario reduces the electricity demand growth from 102 percent to 64 percent, resulting in a 1.7 percent annual growth rate over 30 years.
• The IZEC tool models five specific regions: the United States, China, the European Union, India, and the world, using data from over 50 sources to help stakeholders test different decarbonization pathways.

APA

Rissman, J., & Sawe, N. (2024). THE INDUSTRIAL ZERO EMISSIONS CALCULATOR. Energy Innovation. https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/Industrial-Zero-Emissions-Calculator-Report-2.pdf

Chicago

Rissman, Jeffrey, and Nik Sawe. THE INDUSTRIAL ZERO EMISSIONS CALCULATOR. Energy Innovation, 2024. https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/Industrial-Zero-Emissions-Calculator-Report-2.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Rissman |first1=Jeffrey |last2=Sawe |first2=Nik |title=THE INDUSTRIAL ZERO EMISSIONS CALCULATOR |publisher=Energy Innovation |date=August 2024 |url=https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/Industrial-Zero-Emissions-Calculator-Report-2.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rissman2024industrial, author = {Rissman, Jeffrey and Sawe, Nik}, title = {{THE INDUSTRIAL ZERO EMISSIONS CALCULATOR}}, institution = {Energy Innovation}, year = {2024}, month = aug, url = {https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/Industrial-Zero-Emissions-Calculator-Report-2.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }