Energies 2021 , 14 , 1161
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transport sector, industrial process and product use (Industrial Process emissions occurring from chemical reactions during the production [2]), and agriculture [2]. In 2017, the CO 2 emission reduction of industrial processes was one of the top priorities in Europe’s emission reduction strategy. The contribution of this sector for the EU-28 was reported as 9% of total emissions in 2017 [3]. However, for Austria the industrial sector accounted for 21% of GHG emissions caused by production processing [4] and 28% of the total final energy consumption, respectively [5] in 2017. This was one of the motivations for the creation of NEFI (www.nefi.at, accessed on 21 January 2021) (New Energy for Industry), a consortium of Austrian companies, research institutes, and public institutions. One of the objectives of NEFI is to provide an integrated approach to profound decarbonization pathways for the energy system in Austria, driven by a transformation of the industrial sector towards being sustainable, efficient, and a low-carbon economy. The present work seeks fulfillment of this objective for the pulp and paper industrial sub-sector. The pulp and paper sector (P&P) is one of the oldest and most significant industrial sectors in Austria, and accounted for 0.89% of the Austrian gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017 [6,7]. The process of paper production consists of three stages, each of which has several sub-processes and can take different routes. This makes the sector very complex and energy-intensive, ranking it the highest final energy consumer in industry, by approxi- mately 20 TWh in 2017 (corresponding to 23% of total final industrial energy use). [5] The P&P sector is also responsible for 7% of industrial emissions, and can play an essential role in the decarbonization of the Austrian industrial energy system. Although the sector has started to reduce CO 2 emissions, by 20% in the last decades [8], due to improvements in energy efficiency (e.g., waste heat recovery) and the reduction of fossil fuel consumption (from 58% in 2000 to 40% in 2017 [9]) by replacement with biofuels (mostly black liquid), a significant emission reduction potential still exists. 1.1. State of Research In recent years, many studies have started to consider the potential for reducing energy consumption and the options for cutting CO 2 emissions in the pulp and paper industry. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) prepared a report by Moya and Pavel in 2018 [10]. They predicted a 1.1% increase in the European P&P sector’s energy consumption and CO 2 emissions of 4.8% in 2050 compared to 2015 without technological updates. Their analysis, using a bottom-up model, showed that the application of the best available technologies in papermaking could lead to a 14.4% reduction in energy consumption in Europe, resulting in a 62.2% reduction in CO 2 emissions due to the contribution of technological improvement. Most of the energy improvement came from the integration of state-of-the-art technologies into new equipment, such as heat recovery, black liquor gasification, and highly efficient appliances. However, most CO 2 savings were due to the conversion from fossil fuels to biofuels and the use of new technologies. In 2012, Fleiter et al. [11] investigated the diffusion of 17 process technologies for improving energy efficiency and resulting CO 2 reduction for the German pulp and paper sector up to 2035 using a techno-economic approach. Based on their results, electricity and fuel consumption in 2035 would be reduced by 16% and 21%, respectively, in the techno- diffusion scenario compared to the frozen efficiency scenario. This energy-saving could reduceCO 2 emissions by 19%. They stated that the most impressive technologies are waste heat recovery in paper mills and new paper drying technologies. Several other energy- saving technologies were not included in the study. They concluded that a significant potential for saving still exists, especially if the system boundaries extend across the enterprise level. P. Griffen et al. [12] conducted a study on the decarbonization of the P&P sector in the UK in 2018. They believe that the P&P sector is a heterogeneous sector with a wide range of product outputs, and lies roughly on the borderline between energy-intensive and nonenergy-intensive industrial sectors. They developed a series of low carbon technology
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