Solar Energy Perspectives - IEA

Chapter 5: Industry and transport
concentrating solar power (CSP) plants to improve the security of the energy supply of
their industrial facilities. One large cement producer is developing a project for a 40-MW
CSP plant in Jordan, although this factory is already connected to the nationwide grid.
Outages are frequent during peak loads, which tend to occur in the afternoon. The CSP
plant, possibly with a few hours thermal storage capacity, would essentially reduce the
demand on the grid from the cement plant during all peak and mid-peak times. The
industry sector not only gets passively “solarised” as the electricity sector gets solarised –
it can take part in this change. This is all the more true as industry offers numerous options
for cogeneration, using not only electricity but large amounts of heat from either
photovoltaic and thermal collectors or solar thermal electricity/concentrating solar
power.
Biomass in industry
Biomass could slowly increase its share in a number of industry sectors (as solid biomass
fuels such as “bio-coal” are further developed). Taibi and Gielen (2010) estimate the potential
contribution of biomass in industry at 5 000 TWh per year by 2050 if there is no interregional
trading of biomass; if interregional biomass trading takes place (notably from Africa to China),
this contribution is estimated to be 8 000 TWh.
Figure 5.3 Possible progression of biomass use in various industry sectors
Iron and steel
Transport equipment
Construction
Non-metallic minerals
Paper, pulp and printing
Non-ferrous metals
Machinery
Textile and leather
Mining and quarrying
Chemical and petrochemical
Food and tobacco
Wood and wood products
%
100
90 Biomass use in the paper
and in the wood sector is
80 already well established
70
60
50
40
Chemical, petrochemical
30 Construction sector
and cement sectors
currently wastes a
need support achieving
20 large amount of wood
their potential
that gets simply buried
10
0
2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080 2090 2100
Source: Taibi, Gielen and Bazilian, 2010.
Key point
Interregional biomass trading could increase its long term contribution to industry by 60%.
One option is to use charcoal, the original fuel for producing iron, in addition to or in lieu
of electro-winning. Significant amounts of pig iron are still successfully produced using
charcoal, notably in Brazil. For nearly 600 Mt of pig iron smelted annually in the early 2000s,
about 250 Mha of tropical eucalyptus plantations would be needed, or about half Brazil’s
total forested area in 2000 (Smil, 2006).
95
© OECD/IEA, 2011