Innovative flexibility solutions for energy intensive industries. A new project helps them go green.

The transition to climate-neutrality, which the EU is aiming to achieve by 2050, will require transformational efforts in all sectors of the economy.
The industrial sector alone accounts for 27% of the total final energy consumption in the EU countries and constitutes one of the key players in the game-changing scenario proposed by the European Green Deal.

Energy Intensive Industries (EIIs) in particular, make up more than half of the energy consumption of the EU industry: they represent the foundation of critical and strategic value chains that produce goods that can help reducing emissions in other sectors of the economy.

In such a context, the challenge is to lower emissions while keeping industry competitive and positioning it to exploit the huge potential global market for low-emission technologies and services.

To support EIIs in this endeavour, the European-funded research project FLEXIndustries seeks to develop and test the most suitable Energy Efficiency Measures and Process Flexibility Methods for EII environments and their interconnections with the electrical & heating networks.

FLEXIndustries will adopt a holistic approach to industry, covering various levels – devices, processes, and value chains. It looks at these on different scales – operating, tactical and strategic. More specifically the project support industries in redesigning and optimising their production processes and rethinking their interaction with the energy system. This should lead toward a vast integration of renewable energy sources (RES) and the improvement of their environmental footprint.

In parallel, the adoption of digital technologies will help EIIs to become more efficient in data management and to optimise their industrial processes from different perspectives such as efficiency, uptime, quality, speed, flexibility, costs, etc. To achieve this goal a Dynamic Energy & Process Management Platform will be developed within the project to enable industries to better use energy storage and conversion assets. It will also provide for new market designs for enhanced Industrial Energy Flexibility.

FLEXIndustries energy efficiency measures and process flexibility methods will be tested and validated in real life conditions. Demo cases in even industrial sectors (automotive, biofuels, polymers, steel, pulp & paper, pharmaceuticals, cement) in 6 countries will be involved to demonstrate: a) energy efficiency and operational flexibility along with process redesign/modification; b) how to increase level of electrification, digitalization and automation; c) how to enhance user satisfaction and grid flexibility services and d) how to decrease the environmental footprint.

“FLEXIndustries is an ambitious project that aims at developing a flexibility assessment methodology to improve Energy Intensive Industries efficiency through an optimisation of their production processes. The project results will impact positively on European industries and will contribute to lower their emissions while keeping them competitive. ICONS, responsible for the Work Package on “Business plan, models, exploitation and dissemination” will work since the very beginning to reach, engage, and make synergies with key target audience and stakeholders, promoting the spread of FLEXIndustries vision towards a broader community that can benefit from the energy flexibility transition. To reach this goal ICONS will implement an exploitation strategy that will be rolled out around the value chains of the FLEXIndustries demo sites acting as drivers for replication and market penetration of sustainable, flexible processes in 7 specific energy intensive sectors.”

(Ilaria Bonetti, ICONS’ Project Manager responsible for FLEXIndustries project)

To know more about FLExINDUSTRIES contact Ilaria Bonetti – Communication and Press Office