Governance in Industry

• This presentation discusses governance in industry, focusing on the industrial sector's environmental impact and emerging technologies.
• Dr. Mar Pérez-Fortes from the E&I section – TPM presented this on March 24, 2025, in Delft.

Governance

• Governance involves the systems, processes, and structures used to make decisions, exercise authority, and manage resources in organizations, governments, or other entities.
• Effective governance ensures accountability, transparency, and fairness while working towards collective goals.
• The main components of governance are:
  • Transparency: Making information and decision-making accessible to stakeholders to foster trust and prevent corruption.
  • Accountability: Ensuring individuals or entities are responsible for their actions and decisions, with mechanisms for oversight and evaluation.
  • Participation: Encouraging active involvement from stakeholders to consider diverse perspectives and enhance legitimacy.

Agenda: Part 1

• The agenda includes the definition and discussion of the industrial sector and its environmental impact:
  • Major streams.
  • Types of streams, mitigation of emissions and waste, and main actors or stakeholders involved in environmental impact mitigation.
• Key learning objectives are to:
  • Recognize the importance of the industrial sector.
  • Identify the main inlet and outlet streams and important actors or stakeholders in an industrial plant.
  • Describe industrial clusters and industrial symbiosis.

Industry Evolution

• Industry 1.0: Characterized by the steam engine and mechanization.
• Industry 2.0: Mass production in assembly lines with the use of electricity.
• Industry 3.0: Use of IT systems, robotics, and automated production.
• Industry 4.0: Smart factories, artificial intelligence, and networks.
• Industry 5.0: Complements Industry 4.0 by focusing on research and innovation for a sustainable, human-centric, and resilient industry.
• Industry 5.0 shifts from an economic approach to a focus on social value and well-being, putting worker well-being at the heart of the production process, bringing prosperity beyond jobs and growth.

The Industrial Sector

• It is a segment of the economy that includes companies that create physical products, delivering a final service:
  • Classification by industrial process and product use includes mineral, chemical, and metal industry; non-energy products from fuels; electronics industry; substitutes for ozone-depleting substances; and others.
  • Classification by energy consumption includes iron and steel, cement, ammonia, aluminum, and pulp and paper production.
• In the EU, six member states generate 74% of the value of sold production.
• The sectors of basic metals and fabricated metal products, food, beverages & tobacco, and motor vehicles & transport account for 47% of the value of sold production in 2022.
• The Netherlands’ industries include agroindustries, metal and engineering products, electrical machinery and equipment, chemicals, petroleum, construction, microelectronics, and fishing.
• The Netherlands is a chemical, oil, and machinery exporter, with agricultural products including milk, potatoes, sugar beets, pork, onions, wheat, poultry, tomatoes, carrots/turnips, and beef.

Material and Energy Flows

• Energy use: Combustion of fuels for heat or work.
• Material use: Utilization of fuels in chemical reactions.
  • Applications include feedstock, reductant, or non-energy product.
• Energy sources: Natural gas, oil, coal, coal coke, biomass, waste, electricity, heat.
• Energy is used for the industrial process, heating, cooling, computers, and ventilation, as heat for industrial processes and boiler fuel.
• Materials can be Natural gas, Coal, Petroleum coke and Pulverised coal.
• Non-energy material use in industry can be for Ammonia and Hydrogen, Aluminium, Iron and steel, Engines (lubrication), and Road paving.

Environmental Impact

• Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by sector in 2016:
• Energy use in industry: 24.2%
• Transport: 16.2%
• Energy use in buildings (electricity and heat): 17.5%.
• Global warming, acidification, land use, euthrophication, resource depletion, and human and ecotoxicities all contribute to environment damage and ecosystem issues.

Reducing Environmental Impact

• Three key strategies to lowering the environmental impact are:
  • Using fewer resources by increasing efficiency, reusing, and recycling.
  • Decarbonizing energy sources.
  • Replacing fossil fuels with alternative feedstocks like waste, biomass, and CO2.

Industrial Clusters and Symbiosis

• Industrial clusters involve a general cluster structure that includes core companies, auxiliary objects, service objects and complementary objects.
• Industrial symbiosis seeks greater collective benefit than the sum of individual benefits, aims to minimize damage in industrial and ecological systems, and improve communication between companies.
• Symbiotic types:
  • Utility exchange.
  • Utility network.
  • By-product exchange.
  • By-product synergy.
  • Supply chain co-sitting.
  • Waste/nutrient recycling.
  • Innovation and business case.
  • Knowledge sharing and innovation.

Circular Economy and Mitigation Options

• Circular economy strategies involve refusing and rethinking, reducing, reusing, repairing and refurbishing, and recycling.
• Impact mitigation options that includes, carbon capture, utilization, and storage, changing raw materials and conversion processes, process integration (using waste heat for power generation), and electrification.

Agenda Part Two: Governing Low Carbon Emerging Technologies for Transformative Change

• CO2 electrolysis – an emerging technology.
• TechnoIogical Innovation Systems (TIS) framework.
• Contextual influences on TIS.
• Enablers and Barriers.

Research Goals

• Research goal for CO2 electrolysis is to identify enablers and barriers that influencing its development and diffusion in Europe:
  • Goal Includes Identify interventions to unlock its full potential to contribute to sustainable energy transition.
• Governance is needed to protect users, protect the planet, reduce uncertainty, disrupt the status quo, anticipate and minimize harm, and to direct technology towards desirable objectives.
• Low-carbon transitions are disruptive and contested because they threaten economic positions and business models, encounter disagreement over solutions, and require complex negotiations and trade-offs.
• Multiple analytical lenses, combining techno-economic assessments, multi-level perspective, and political economy, are needed to identify enablers and barriers, as each offers only a partial view.
• CO2 electrolysis involves actors like legislators, renewable energy providers, chemical industries, local transportation companies, technology developers, project developers, and end-users.
• CO2 electrolysis may become critical for the European chemical industry post-2050 despite current unlikelihood.

Key Lessons

• Emerging low-carbon technologies face many barriers.
• Resistance also comes from powerful industries with threatened business models.
• Governance is needed to achieve desirable outcomes using policy actions that includes trade-offs and management of uncertainties.
• Analytical lenses can identify key enablers and barriers.
• Combining different frameworks gives a realistic view of needed interventions.