Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-11 (section)

== 11.7 Knowledge Gaps ==

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An increasing body of research proposes deep decarbonisation pathways for energy-intensive industries including mitigation options such as materials efficiency, circular economy and new primary processes. These options are under-represented in climate change scenario modelling and integrated assessment models, some of which do not even reflect evolution of demand for basic materials, which is a key driver behind energy consumption and GHG emissions in the industrial sector. As a result, no agreement is reached so far between bottom-up and top-down studies on the effectiveness and costs for many promising mitigation options, their respective roles, sequencing and packaging within various mitigation pathways.

A significant shift is needed from the transition process of the past mainly based on marginal and incremental changes, with a strong focus on energy efficiency efforts, to one grounded in transformational change where there is limited knowledge of how to implement such change effectively.

There is a knowledge gap on comparable, comprehensive, and detailed quantitative information on costs and potentials associated with the mitigation options for deep decarbonisation in industry, as cost estimates are not often comparable due to the regional or country focus, differences in costs metrics, currencies, discount rates, and energy prices across studies and regions.

A very large and important uncertainty is the availability of biomass for deep decarbonisation pathways due to competition for biomass feedstock with other priorities and the extent to which electrification can reduce the demand for bioenergy in the industry, transport and energy sectors.

CCS and CCU are important mitigation options in industry, for which the potentials and costs vary considerably depending on the diversity of industrial processes, the volume and purity of carbon dioxide flows, the energy requirements, the lifetime of utilisation products and the production route.

The effectiveness of mitigation policies in industry is poorly known, as so far the sector has largely been sheltered from the impacts of climate policy due to the concerns of competitiveness and carbon leakage. There is a lack of integration of material efficiency and circularity with energy and climate policies which partly results from the inadequacy of monitored indicators to inform policy debates and set targets, a lack of high-level political focus, a history of strong industrial lobbying, uncoordinated policy across subsectors and institutions, and the sequential nature of decision-making along supply chains.

Industry as a whole is a very complex web of sectors, subsectors and inter-sectoral interactions and dependence, with diverse associated mitigation opportunities and co-benefits and costs. Additional knowledge is needed to understand sectoral interactions in the transformation processes.

Industrial climate mitigation policy is supplemental to many other policy instruments developed to reach multiple industrial goals, for the range of stakeholders with their interest and priorities reflecting the assessment of co-benefits and risk and affecting decision-making processes and behaviour of stakeholders. Better knowledge is needed to identify the co-benefits for the adoption of climate change mitigation strategies.

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