One of These Things IS Like the Other: Pursuing a New Taxonomy of Industry for Improved Energy System Modeling

Liz Wachs, Colin McMillan

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract

Industrial processes drive the exchange of materials, energy, and currency throughout the economy. These processes are powered by electricity and direct combustion, with variation in their operation even within the same industry. This heterogeneity makes it difficult for large models, including the National Energy Modeling System (US), to project their energy use while remaining tractable. Decarbonization and ensuing changes to the energy system require changes to industrial processes while offering opportunities for process innovation, but the extent and nature of changes are difficult to model with current classification schemes and corresponding data. The North American Industrial Classification (NAICS) is an economic taxonomy of industries, but its categories are less meaningful from an energy and material flow perspective. For example, a facility that makes steel from iron ore in a blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace is categorized under the same NAICS code as a facility that makes steel from scrap in an electric arc furnace despite the scale, use of recycled scrap versus iron ore, and energy use differences in the two facility types. Exploratory analysis is performed on a large dataset used for plant-level energy assessment in order to detect clusters that can aid in better modeling of industry for energy analysis in an evolving system with breakthrough technologies.
Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages18
StatePublished - 2021
Event2021 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Industry Virtual -
Duration: 12 Jul 202115 Jul 2021

Conference

Conference2021 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Industry Virtual
Period12/07/2115/07/21

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/CP-6A20-80141

Keywords

  • clustering
  • industry
  • taxonomy

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