Industry accounts for about one third of Austria’s end-use energy consumption, half of which is provided by natural gas and one third by electricity. Industrial plants are highly individual constructions – therefore their reliability, long service life and utilization are important criteria for economic efficiency. Consequently, the transition of the energy system poses special challenges to industries. Many industries are considered “hard-to-abate” sectors, in which low CO₂ technologies are particularly complex to introduce. In some cases, entirely new processes need to be considered that are renewable, energy efficient, and can be incorporated into an energy system with fluctuating sources. Examples include electrification, recycling technologies, bio-based substitutes, the use of hydrogen, or carbon capture and utilization. In this transition process, we support forward-looking planning to avoid sunk costs. The energy- and resource-optimized cooperation with the environment of the plant within the framework of the “Industrial-Urban-Symbiosis” offers further potential for increasing the overall energy efficiency; in particular, the use and valorization of industrial surplus heat, e.g., by feeding it into district heating networks, represents a concrete starting point. We focus on the non-technical aspects for achieving solutions in this area.
