Development of a high-level modelling tool to aid the transition to carbon neutral industrial manufacturing

—Organisations are increasingly motivated to explore carbon neutrality planning owing to regulatory pressures and organisational drivers such as corporate social responsibility. However, organisations lack practical guidance and technical support for early-stage planning, preventing decisive action and delaying the start of their carbon neutrality journey. To address this need, this study involves the development of a novel, high-level modelling tool designed to support non-energy-intensive Irish industrial organisations in the initial stages of exploring carbon neutrality. The modelling tool uses readily available, site-level data as model inputs. The model outputs are a five-year carbon neutrality roadmap and a financial analysis based on decarbonisation measures in the order of demand reduction, energy efficiency, electrification through heat pumps for hot water loads and electric boilers for steam loads, renewable electricity adoption, and carbon offsetting of residual emissions. This is intended as a decision-support tool for investing in studies required to pursue more in-depth carbon neutrality planning, and serves as a feasible pathway to carbon neutrality rather than an economically optimised solution. This paper outlines the user-defined and inherent modelling tool inputs, and details the first-principles mathematical models underpinning the tool. A case study of an industrial organisation is presented to illustrate the modelling tool applicability. While a high degree of modelling inaccuracy up to 50% is anticipated given the generic assumptions, this is considered acceptable because the tool is intended for early-stage decision support, providing order-of-magnitude insight to motivate further detailed studies and to combat greenstalling rather than to deliver optimised or investment-grade solutions.