Industrial Energy and Carbon Emissions Reduction In the UK Glass Sector

What is it about?

The potential for reducing industrial energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the UK glass sector has been evaluated, although the lessons learned are applicable across much of the industrialised world. It encompasses a range of product outputs, including flat glass (for glazing in the construction and automotive industries), container glass (bottles and jars), domestic glassware, fibreglass, and scientific hollow glass. Glass processing is a moderately energy-intensive industrial sector, and its GHG emissions are relatively low (~3% of those emanating from UK industry as a whole). This technology assessment was conducted within the context of the historical development of the glass sector, as well as its contemporary industrial structure. Currently available technologies will lead to short-term energy and GHG emissions savings in the sector, but the prospects for the commercial exploitation of innovative technologies by mid-21st century is speculative. Glass is potentially 100% recyclable, and could therefore contribute to UK ‘circular economy’ or resource efficiency aspirations. Finally, a set of low-carbon UK technology roadmaps for the glass sector out to 2050 has been developed and evaluated, based on various alternative scenarios and the techno-economic characterisation of improvement potentials. These roadmaps help identify the steps needed to be undertaken by industrialists, policy makers and other stakeholders in order to facilitate decarbonisation of the UK glass sector.

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Photo by Verne Ho on Unsplash

Photo by Verne Ho on Unsplash

Why is it important?

A set of low-carbon UK ‘technology roadmaps’ for the glass sector out to 2050 have been developed and evaluated, based on various alternative scenarios and the techno-economic characterisation of improvement potentials. These low-CO2 pathways indicate a broad range of possible UK industrial carbon reductions or uncertainties out to 2050. The attainment of the estimated falls in glass sector CO2 emissions under the Reasonable Action (RA) scenario (~54% over the period 1990-2050) depends critically on the adoption of a limited number of key technologies in the short-term. These would include energy efficiency and heat recovery techniques (including improved thermal insulation of industrial buildings, furnaces, and process equipment), and fuel switching (principally to biomass/bioenergy, but potentially to hydrogen (H2) over a longer time-scale). More radical innovations by 2050 might include CO2 capture (CCU/CCS) and greater electrification of glass-making. These have been illustrated by a comparison of the ‘breakthrough’ roadmaps represented by scenarios RA-CCS, RA-CCS [bio], and Radical Transition (RT). They yield Scope 1-2/3 GHG emissions reduction by 2050 (compared with 1990 levels) of 78% under RA-CCS, 88% with RA-CCS [bio], and 79% for RT. Thus, all breakthrough roadmaps deliver on the 70% target envisaged for industry within the initial UK Carbon Plan. The British Government is legally committed, since June 2019, to achieving net-zero emissions (i.e., 100% abatement) by 2050 across the economy as a whole, but the use of ‘negative emissions’ technologies in some sectors will provide the opportunity for variation between different end-use energy demand sectors and various industries.

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