Decarbonizing the Industry Sector: Current Status and Future Opportunities of Energy-Aware Production Scheduling

As industries come under growing pressure to minimize carbon emissions without compromising the efficiency of operations, the integration of energy-aware production scheduling with emerging energy markets, renewable energy, and policy mechanisms is critical. This paper identifies critical shortcomings in current academic and industrial approaches—namely, an excessive reliance on deterministic assumptions, a limited focus on dynamic operational realities, and the underutilization of regulatory mechanisms such as carbon trading. We advocate for a paradigm shift to more robust, adaptable, and policy-compliant scheduling systems that provide space for on-site renewable generation, battery energy storage systems (BESSs), demand-response measures, and real-time electricity pricing schemes like time-of-use (TOU) and real-time pricing (RTP). By integrating recent advances and their critical analysis of limitations, we map out a future research agenda for the integration of uncertainty modeling, machine learning, and multi-level optimization with policy compliance. In this paper, we propose the need for joint efforts from researchers, industries, and policymakers to collectively develop industrial scheduling systems that are both technically efficient and adherent to sustainability and regulatory requirements.