Abstract: In response to targets for future greenhouse gas emissions reduction, most effort to date has been devoted to supply side technologies. However, nuclear power and carbon sequestration carry significant risks, renewable generation is land intensive, and the transition between energy systems is slow and expensive. In parallel with these efforts, by how much could efficiency measures lead to reduced demand for energy? To answer this question, we have created a map of the global flow of energy – from fuel to final service via technologies – and predicted both theoretical and practical limits to future efficiency gains, suggesting that well over half current demand could be avoided without significant loss of services.
The bigger options for emissions reduction occur in the buildings and transport sectors, while industry – which has always been motivated by cost to be energy efficient – has less apparent potential. For example, nearly 10% of the world’s emissions from energy and processes arise in the production of goods from steel and aluminium. By 2050 demand for both metals will have doubled, and a survey of best practice and emerging innovation technologies suggests that emissions could be reduced by at most a third within the existing process.
Recycling rates are already high for both metals, but recycling is still energy intensive, and even if a future metal economy operated as a closed loop it would require more energy than consistent with carbon emissions reductions targets. Are there any other options?
A significant opportunity to make a step change reduction in emissions is to apply the strategies of material efficiency to future steel and aluminium use: to provide the same material services with less metal production. The WellMet2050 project (www.wellmet2050.com) funded by £1.4m from EPSRC and with a consortium of 20 global industrial partners, is running from 2009-2013 to explore the development of material efficiency in the steel and aluminium industry. The project has identified four key themes: re-using metal without melting, using less metal for each application, using metal goods for longer, and re- organising the supply chain. Work to date suggests that all four areas are technically possible, that there is significantly more scope for abatement in industries through material saving than energy saving, and that both economic and policy implementation is feasible.
Biography: Julian Allwood leads the Low Carbon and Materials Processing research group in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge (lcmp.eng.cam.ac.uk). The first 10 years of his career were funded by contracts with the Alcoa Technical Centre in Pittsburgh. In 1996 he was appointed as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Imperial College, and moved to Cambridge in 2000. His research group, currently 15 people, focuses on the technologies and systems of material and energy efficiency, largely related to metals.
Current projects include development of second generation incremental sheet forming processes with Ford, Novelis, Metal Spinners and Cummins, technologies for toner print removal to allow paper-reuse with Xerox, identification and evaluation of options for future carbon emissions reductions with Unilever, and a global study of future resource scenarios with BP.
He is vice Chairman of the scientific technical committee on metal forming of the International Academy of Production Engineering (CIRP), and since 2007 has been joint editor-in-chief of the Journal of Materials Processing Technology. He has been appointed as a Lead Author for the chapter on mitigation in industry in the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report, to be published in 2014. In 2008 he was awarded a 5- year £1.4m EPSRC Leadership Fellowship to lead a major project on the global carbon emissions targets for steel and aluminium in collaboration with a consortium of 20 global companies spanning the metals supply chain (www.wellmet2050.com).