Industry Overview

Industry is responsible for nearly 40% of energy usage worldwide as follows.

Energy use in world industry. Overall figures and figures by sector derived from the IEA Sankey diagrams ¹ and primary energy conversion factors ².

Worldwide, we estimate the following potential energy and greenhouse gas savings through various methods in industry.

Major energy and greenhouse gas savings opportunities in energy. Source: World Bank ³. See also our analyses of industrial heat, chemicals and other major industrial commodities, carbon capture and sequestration, recycling, industrial systems, and material reduction.

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions and pollution from industry is a major challenge, both due to the scale of industrial energy and the lack of economical substitutes for fossil fuels in process heat and chemical feedstocks. Emissions can be reduced through more aggressive efficiency and technology efforts, such as in commodities and motor and steam systems, recycling, and material reduction, but the greatest near term potential might lie in carbon capture and sequestration. However, CCS necessarily requires policy support, such as carbon pricing or regulation. The solutions with the largest potential impacts--CCS and electricity or hydrogen for industrial heat--come at substantial energy costs and will require additional development of clean energy sources.