The Swedish iron and steel industry is focused on the production of advanced steel grades and accounts for about 5% of the country's final energy consumption. Energy efficiency is according to the European Commission a key element for the transition towards a resource-efficient economy. We investigated four aspects that are associated with the adoption of cost-effective energy conservation measures: barriers, drivers, energy management practices and energy services. We used questionnaires and followup telephone interviews to collect data from members of the Swedish steel association.The heterogeneous observations implied a classification into steel producers and downstream actors. For testing the significance, the Mann-Whitney U test was used. The most important barriers were internal economic and behavioural barriers. Energy service companies, in particular third-party financing, played a minor role. In contrast, high importance was attached to energy management as the most important drivers originated from within the company. Energy management practices showed that steel companies are actively engaged in the topic, but need to raise its prioritisation and awareness within the organisation. When sound energy management practices are included, the participants assessed the cost-effective energy conservation potential to be 9.7%, which was 2.4%higher than the potential for solely adopting cost-effective technologies.
The aluminium industry is facing a challenge in meeting the goal of halved greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, while the demand for aluminium is estimated to increase 2-3 times by the same year. Energy efficiency will play an important part in achieving the goal. The paper's aim was to investigate possible production-related energy efficiency measures in the aluminium industry. Mining of bauxite and production of alumina from bauxite are not included in the study. In total, 52 measures were identified through a literature review. Electrolysis in primary aluminium production, recycling and general measures constituted the majority of the 52 measures. This can be explained by the high energy intensity of electrolysis, the relatively wide applicability of the general measures and the fact that all aluminium passes through either electrolysis or recycling. Electrolysis shows a higher number of emerging/novel measures compared to the other processes, which can also be explained by its high energy intensity. Processing aluminium with extrusion, rolling, casting (shape-casting and casting of ingots, slabs and billets), heat treatment and anodising will also benefit from energy efficiency. However, these processes showed relatively fewer measures, which might be explained by the fact that to some extent, these processes are not as energy demanding compared, for example, to electrolysis. In many cases, the presented measures can be combined, which implies that the best practice should be to combine the measures. There may also be a future prospect of achieving carbon-neutral and coal-independent electrolysis. Secondary aluminium production will be increasingly important for meeting the increasing demand for aluminium with respect to environmental and economic concerns and strengthened competitiveness. Focusing on increased production capacity, recovery yields and energy efficiency in secondary production will be pivotal. Further research and development will be required for those measures designated as novel or emerging.
The processes of iron and steel making are energy intensive and consume large quantities of electricity and fossil fuels. In order to meet future climate targets and energy prices, the iron and steel industry has to improve its energy and resource efficiency. For the iron and steel industry to utilize its energy resources more efficiently and at the same time reduce its CO 2 emissions a number of options are available. In this paper, opportunities for both integrated and scrap-based steel plants are presented and some of the options are electricity production, fuel conversion,
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