What Are Low-Carbon Fuels and Energy Sources and Why Are They Important?
Low-carbon fuels refer to materials that, when burned, provide thermal energy with fewer emissions than traditional fuels. This thermal energy is often used to generate electricity for industrial facilities, such as in combined heat and power systems.
Traditional fuels have typically been the main source of thermal energy in American manufacturing. They are energy-dense, meaning they store a significant amount of energy per unit of volume or mass, which makes them easy to store and transport. Releasing the energy stored in these fuels through combustion has historically been the most economic way to produce the large amounts of heat needed for industrial processes.
However, to increase competitiveness in evolving global markers, manufacturers are exploring alternatives to traditional fuel combustion for industrial applications.
There is also an opportunity for industrial sites to replace fuels entirely with cost-effective low- and zero-carbon energy sources. Rather than burning fuels, industrial sites can directly use nuclear, geothermal, solar thermal power, and a variety of other energy sources.
How Do Industrial Facilities Use Low-Carbon Fuels and Energy Sources?
Integrating alternative low- and zero-carbon fuels creates a unique set of challenges for existing industrial facilities. For example, integrating energy sources such as geothermal heat or solar thermal power, typically requires installing new capital equipment to support energy collection, transportation, and storage and is generally untested at an industrial scale. Moreover, in a globally competitive marketplace, it is difficult for operators to incur the cost of replacing functional, gas-fired equipment before its end-of-life. For this reason, in addition to funding R&D to lower the costs of deploying these technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy's Industrial Technologies Office provides technical assistance to industrial facilities aiming to integrate onsite energy resources into operations through its onsite energy program.