Alliance for Industry Decarbonization aims to accelerate achieving net-zero goals

The event fostered partnerships through initiating dialogue and taking tangible actions that are crucial for industrial stakeholders to best address the challenges and navigate opportunities of clean energy transition. The meeting also advanced exchanges and collaboration to accelerate global climate action. The participants voiced the industry’s views on the importance of coherent, comprehensive, coordinated, and thoughtful policies to ensure a safe transition aimed at having a fully functional, reliable, and efficient energy system.

The speakers shared their opinions on policy measures to secure green financing, trigger industry’s decarbonization and promote the clean energy transition through enhanced digitalization, smart decentralization and technology advances (renewables, green hydrogen, bioenergy with CCS, heat optimization) and human capital. AFID speakers were Mr. Marco Margheri, Head of USA International Relations Office, Eni, Mr. Rich Voorberg, Siemens Energy, President, North America, Mr. Wouter de Groot, VP Sustainability, FLSmidth, Mr. Bruce Douglas, CEO, Global Renewables Alliance, Mr. Nour Sobh, Senior Advisor - Corporate Energy Sourcing, Eurelectric, and Ms. Mikki Corcoran, VP Sustainability, SLB.

It was highlighted during the event that while the energy transition undoubtedly requires time, there is significant potential to implement many of the available technology options today. Upward trends in the deployment of these solutions demonstrate that the technical and economic case is sound. There was a general consensus that comprehensive policies are needed across all sectors to ramp up deployment. This is besides instigating the systemic and structural overhaul required to realise climate and development objectives.

A good number of industrial firms and stakeholders operating in energy-intensive sectors have furthered the discussion by sharing their ambition to decarbonize their activities along their value chains and companies that have knowledge and expertise in the deployment of energy transition technologies. All reporting companies serve as role models for other members of the AFID but also to many large, medium, and small companies around the world.

It was stressed that AFID has over 50 members and knowledge partners; about half of the AFID members published reports on their companies’ emissions and reduction targets until 2030 on Scope 1 & 2 and less members reported on Scope 3. AFID Speakers were Daniel Trillos, Vice-Chair of ISO's technical committee on environmental management, Bratin Roy, Sr. Vice President Sustainability TÜV SÜD, Khushboo Oswal, Business Line Manager Climate Action Certification, TÜV SÜD, and Ahmed Samir ELBERMBALI, Sustainability Market Leader, Bureau Veritas.

The workshop concluded with highlighting the need to accelerate the agreed global actions to decarbonize industrial value chains and promote understanding of renewables-based solutions and their adoption by industry with a view to contributing to country-specific net-zero goals.

The side event on “Accelerating net-zero ambitions through clean hydrogen for decarbonization of industrial value chains” held at CEM14/MI-8 in Goa on 19 July 2023, featured presentations on international collaboration platforms to foster decarbonization of industrial value chains as well as a panel discussion on international standards, conformity assessment, and regulations.

IRENA informed about progress under Alliance for Industry Decarbonization that aims to facilitate dialogue on industry level and increase cooperation to help companies to develop solid decarbonization strategies and implementation plans, aligned with their countries’ net-zero and decarbonization commitments. The Alliance is to serve as a global platform for enhancing dialogue through exchange of insights, experiences and best practices.

UNIDO presented Global Programme For Hydrogen In Industry which powers net zero industrialization and economic development in the Global South and contributes to accelerate local green hydrogen production & application, global trade and decarbonization.

The Net-Zero Industries Mission (NZIM) presneted ongoing collaboration across countries, government, and industry to drive and accelerate the adoption of decarbonisation technologies by the hard to abate, energy intensive industries. The Mission’s goal is to catalyse the development and demonstration of cost competitive solutions for the efficient decarbonisation of hard to abate energy intensive industries worldwide by 2030.

Australia informed about its policy landscape and the Clean Hydrogen Mission where the country is taking a lead role on the Storage and Distribution Working Group. Australia presented a global interactive map of collected case-studies with best practice in innovation, development, and demonstration of hydrogen storage and distribution.

Following the presentations on international collaboration platforms, the speakers from IPHE, IEC, IRENA, Hydrogen Council and Tata Steel continued panel discussion on standards and conformity assessments as interdependent determinants of the development of green hydrogen and thus industry decarbonization. They noted about increased international confidence in green hydrogen and lowered costs. Panellists urged that these determinants are accelerated, and emphasised that standards require greater awareness, the inclusion of developing countries, and focus on the role of guiding governments to create enabling environments. Regulations and certificates were also underscored as essential, especially for facilitating the trade of green hydrogen.

Innovation was another key topic during the event, and the importance of standards for innovation, as well as renewable energy, was noted. It was highlighted that innovation will be essential for supporting the growing hydrogen workforce; additionally, anticipated innovations were shared, including the injection of hydrogen into blast furnace. Throughout the presentations and panel discussion, the value of international collaboration was stressed, especially through knowledge sharing.

It has been concluded that standards, conformity assessment, and regulations – also known as Quality Infrastructure (QI) – play a fundamental role for safe hydrogen production, trade and use. The fundamental rules, standards and certifications have been defined to enable the safety of infrastructure and its installation, storage, use, repair/maintenance and transport of hydrogen, including GH2. All countries with hydrogen initiatives are encouraged to participate in international standards setting and use existing infrastructure elements such as International ISO and IEC Standards, as well as international certifications such as IECEx. They help industry to develop the quality and safety infrastructure needed once GH2 projects become operational, largely avoiding the need for investments in technical conformity assessment infrastructure.

The Alliance for Industry Decarbonization was represented at the World Utilities Congress hosted by Alliance member TAQA. The Congress, which ran from 8-10th May 2023, brought together energy leaders, policymakers, innovators, and industry professionals from around the globe to share perspectives on the trends, opportunities, and challenges of the industry in pursuit of a secure and sustainable utilities future.

The Alliance powered the Global Panel Discussion on Exploring the role of utilities in decarbonising industrial demand. Amidst the urgent need to decarbonize industry, the panel discussion considered how cooperation between utilities and industry can enable the utilities industry to assume its critical role in this regard. There was a focus on how green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage can be harnessed, the use of demand response programs, and how energy-efficient technologies and practices can be developed and implemented.

The Deputy Director-General of IRENA, Gauri Singh, emphasised that: “Targets must be implementable, achievable and tangible.” Among other key messages was the consensus that collaboration throughout and beyond industry must be optimised to navigate the complexities of industrial decarbonization, to produce tangible impacts and to account for the interests and challenges of stakeholders. The value of best practices and lessons learnt from experiences with technologies in informing the way forward was also emphasised. Another key message that emerged was the importance of creating a conducive and enabling environment for the utilities sector to adequately contribute to decarbonizing industrial demand, with an emphasis on policy frameworks and effective innovation.

The Alliance for Industry Decarbonization powered a session at the Hannover Messe which took place from 17th-21st April 2023. The world’s leading industrial fair brought together key stakeholders from within the sector and beyond to convene under the theme of “Industrial Transformation” to which decarbonization is a key issue.

The session Decarbonizing industries – Tackling the tough stuff was hosted by co-founding partner Siemens Energy and began with technology pitches from start-ups focused on scaling technologies to reduce Europe’s natural gas consumption under the Energy Resilience Leadership Group initiative. Following this, a high-level panel discussion ensued whereby experts discussed industry decarbonization with a focus on technologies, the role of partnerships and what is required by industries through topics including investment, measuring and reporting, and innovation.

Panelists emphasised that although it is relative by industry and context, the four key solutions for decarbonizing industry are electrification, energy efficiency, hydrogen and carbon capture, usage and storage. The key message of the panel was the importance of cross-sectoral partnerships in accelerating efforts, especially in confronting challenges such as the scarcity or lack of availability of certain technologies and the need to establish green markets with demand to match supply. The panel also brought forward key considerations including the potential need to source energy internationally through global value chains to adequately satisfy the high demand required to meet decarbonization targets.