An Integrated Assessment of the Leading Paths to Decarbonize Industrial Sectors

Integrated assessment modeling (IAM) scenarios of the global energy, land-use, and climate systems have historically relied on an aggregated representation of industrial energy use and emissions. This is a major gap in their capability given that industry was responsible for ~25% of global emissions in 2022. Strategies to reduce emissions from industrial activities are critical to achieving warming targets and IAMs are tools that policy makers use to inform their decisions. This dissertation adds a diverse suite of industrial decarbonization pathways for two of the top emitting industrial sectors, cement and chemicals, to the principal US-based IAM. First, an updated framework to model the mitigation of CO2 emissions from the manufacture of cement was incorporated into the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), and the deployment of emerging technologies in response to a global net-zero by 2050 goal was assessed. Then, an updated framework to model the mitigation of CO2 emissions from the life cycle of organic chemicals and plastics was incorporated into GCAM, and the deployment of emerging technologies in response to a global net-zero by 2050 goal was assessed. To complement the IAM work, an environmentally extended multi-region input output (I-O) database, exiobase, was used to explore the impact of demand for and trade of construction materials on greenhouse gas emissions. Exiobase captures dynamics such as sectoral consumption of materials and international trade that have not traditionally been well represented in other IAMs. The IAM results reveal that the current landscape of emerging technologies, beyond just CCS, for the cement sector and organic chemicals sector have the potential to significantly reduce CO2 emissions.