SmInd – Sector Model Industry

What is SmInd used for?

The sector model industry (SmInd) analyses the transformation of the European industrial sector towards climate neutrality. It enables the calculation of greenhouse gas reduction pathways at various levels – from the economic sectors to selected, bottom-up mapped industrial processes and specific measures.

SmInd can be used to answer key questions on industrial policy and decarbonisation such as:

• What requirements and effects do different transformation paths of the industry have on the energy system in Europe?
• What are the effects of delaying the transformation?
• How does the availability of carbon capture and hydrogen technologies influence emissions reduction?
• How is the industrial sector currently developing in comparison to the climate neutrality target pathway?

Modelling

SmInd’s input data includes primary data from over 200 energy efficiency audits and expert interviews as well as from statistics and literature such as industry and technology reports. 47 energy-intensive processes are modelled in detail on the basis of production volume development and the definition of specific energy and material demands as well as specific emissions. The remaining part of the demand and emissions is modelled top-down for each economic sector in a process-unspecific manner based on the expected economic growth. Various types of data are used for the modelling:

• Technology data for the evaluation of greenhouse gas reduction measures: Information on lifetimes, replacement rates, efficiencies and costs of technologies.
• Industrial structure: Energy and application balances, energy demands per economic sector, in some cases down to energy source and application level, process-specific production volumes, process-specific energy and material demands, process-specific emission values, company and employee figures per economic sector, energy and CO2 prices.

The model distinguishes between four categories of mitigation measures:

1. process route changes (applicable to specific processes)
2. fuel switching, mostly electrification of thermal process plants
3. increase in energy efficiency
4. carbon capture (applicable on a process-specific basis)

Approximately 175 mitigation measures can be assigned to the four categories. The effects of these measures are calculated on the basis of extensive data and assessed in terms of energy consumption, emissions and costs.

SmInd provides detailed results for the EU27+3 countries, broken down annually for the period 2019 (base year) to 2050. The data is broken down into 13 economic sectors, 47 processes, 14 energy sources, 9 feedstocks and 12 application areas. In addition, the model enables regionalisation down to NUTS 3 level and the generation of hourly electricity and heat load profiles based on synthetic load profiles.

The final energy consumption of the industrial sector is also incorporated into the ISAaR model, which means that SmInd is seamlessly embedded in the FfE’s modelling landscape.

SmInd was developed as part of the dissertation “Development of an industry model for the derivation of cost-optimized energy transformation pathways for German industry” (Tobias Hübner, 2023) and the dissertation “CO₂ Abatement in the European Industry Sector” (Andrej Guminski, 2022).

Projects and publications

• eXtremOS (XOS)​ Link to the website and to the publication​