Challenges of Renewable Energy Sourcing in the Process Industries: The Example of the German Chemical Industry

Abstract

The ongoing move toward carbon neutrality in Europe and, more recently, towards reducing Russian natural gas as an energy source poses a significant challenge to energy-intensive processes such as the German chemical industry. While many current research studies focus on the transformation of the electrical grid required for the transition to renewable energy sources and the related technical problems and market design, little research has been conducted on the practical feasibility and requirements of energy transformation in energy-intensive process industries. This publication addresses this gap using the projected future energy demand of the German chemical industry and simulation of its coverage by different renewable energy production scenarios using past data on power outputs from renewable energies. Ten-gigawatt offshore wind power installed without additional storage would reduce the natural gas consumption of inflexible large-scale processes in the German chemical industry by 63% or fossil energy consumption by 42%. Hydrogen energy storage has little effect unless employed at sizes comparable to the entire current German storage volume for natural gas. In consequence, while the substitution of fossil energies is technically feasible, the undertaking of reaching a high level of substitution is of a magnitude that makes the time frames currently set seem somewhat optimistic without massive reductions in energy consumption by shutting down large parts of the industry.