Zukünftige Energie- und Industriesysteme
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Im Auftrag des Bundesforschungsministeriums hat das Wuppertal Institut eine Studie zur systemischen Betrachtung und Modellierung der Bioökonomie erstellt. Sie zeigt Wege auf, die komplexen sozio-ökonomischen Zusammenhänge und Umweltauswirkungen der Bioökonomie zu erfassen und soll als Grundlage für den Aufbau eines kontinuierlichen Monitorings dienen. Die Autor(inn)en erfassten Indikatoren und Modellierungsmethoden mit Bezug zur Bioökonomie und weisen auf bestehende Lücken hin: Diese finden sich vor allem bei der Erfassung neuer technologiegetriebener Sektoren, der systemischen Betrachtung eines nachhaltigen Konsums und bei der Modellierung der Zusammenhänge zwischen Innovationen, Wirtschaftswachstum und Ressourcenverbrauch (insbesondere die Landnutzung).
Zur Umsetzung eines systemischen Monitorings empfiehlt die Studie das folgende Vorgehen: Unter Zuhilfenahme des DPSIR-Konzeptes (Analyse von Wirkungsbeziehungen nach Driving forces, Pressures, States, Impacts und Responses) sollten Schlüsselindikatoren und Nachhaltigkeitsziele in einem Indikatoren-"Dashboard" zusammengeführt werden. Benötigt wird zudem ein Werkzeugkasten von Methoden, der vor allem integrierte Analyse- und Bewertungsmodelle sowie ein systemisch konzipiertes Metamodell umfasst.
Energy intensive industries are one of the fields in which strong increases of energy efficiency and deep decarbonisation strategies are particularly challenging. Although European energy intensive industries have already achieved significant energy and greenhouse gas reductions in the past, much remains to be done to make a significant contribution to achieving European as well as national climate mitigation targets of greenhouse gas emission reductions by -80% or more (compared to the baseline of 1990). North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is a European hotspot for coping with this challenge, accommodating more than 10% of the energy intensive industries of the EU28. It is also the first German state to have adopted its own Climate Law, enacting state-wide CO2 emission reductions by 80% until 2050 compared to 1990. The state government initiated the project "Platform Climate Protection and Industry North-Rhine Westphalia" to identify and develop the necessary far-reaching low carbon innovation strategies for energy intensive industries. Heart of the project was a dialogue process, which involved a broad spectrum of stakeholders from steel, chemical, aluminium, cement, glass and paper producing industries. Besides enhancing and broadening the knowledge on high efficiency and low-carbon technologies within industries, the aim was to explore possible pathways and preconditions for the application of these technologies in energy intensive industries as well as to strengthen the motivation of companies for initiatives and investments in technologies with lower CO2 emissions. The results of the dialogue shall provide a basis for a possible low-carbon industry roadmap NRW and may also serve as an example for other industrialized regions in the EU and globally. The paper sketches the structured dialogue process with the stakeholders from companies as well as industrial associations and presents the learnings regarding the engagement of energy intensive industries into ambitious climate policies on a regional level. These include existing limitations as well as chances in the respective sectors on the state level, regarding their economic and technical structures as well as their innovation systems. The findings are based on more than a dozen stakeholder workshops with industry companies and more than 150 individual representatives of NRW's energy intensive industries as well as on background research in the initial phase of the project.
Zur Realisierung der europäischen Klimaschutzziele muss der Industriesektor, besonders die energieintensive Grundstoffindustrie, seine Treibhausgasemissionen stark reduzieren. Obwohl in der Vergangenheit bereits große Fortschritte erzielt wurden, sind in Zukunft weitere, teils bahnbrechende Innovationen und der Aufbau der dafür benötigten Infrastruktur erforderlich. Im Rahmen dieses Projekts stellt das Wuppertal Institut für die "European Climate Foundation" den aktuellen Wissensstand zum Thema zusammen, diskutiert diesen vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Situation für Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW), erstellt konsistente mögliche Zukunftsszenarien für NRW und leitet Schlüsselfragen und weiteren Forschungsbedarf für die Region ab.
Biogas and bio-methane that are based on energy crops are renewable energy carriers and therefore potentially contribute to climate protection. However, significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from agricultural production processes must be considered. Among those, the production and use of fertilizer, and the resulting leaching of nitrous oxide (N2O), are crucial factors. This article provides an integrated life cycle assessment (LCA) of biogas (i.e. bio-methane that has been upgraded and injected into the natural gas grid), taking into account the processes of fermentation, upgrading and injection to the grid for two different types of biogas plants. The analysis is based on different feedstocks from crop rotation systems for different locations in Germany. A special focus is on the sensitivity of assumptions of nitrous oxide emissions to overall GHG emissions. Much research exists on the measurement or modeling of the actual N2O emissions that result from farming processes. Since there is as yet no precise regional data, most analyses use tier-1 data from the IPCC national GHG inventories as a default. The present article coincides with recent research in indicating that this data varies at the regional level. However, it is not the scope of the article to evaluate the quality of existing data for N2O emissions, but to show the effects of different assumptions on the LCA of GHGs from bio-methane. Thus, a link between the provision of emission data and the practical implementation of biogas technology is provided. The main result is that the supply chain of substrates from agricultural processes appears to contribute the most to the GHG emissions of bio-methane. The "worst case" scenario where 5% of the nitrogen fertilizer used is emitted in form of N2O shows that the GHG mitigation potential of bio-methane versus natural gas is very small, so there is not much margin for error in the plant technology.