Do circular economy and a sustainable energy system overlap?

Concluding 2021 – Task work

“In the course of the work on Task XXI (Decarbonizing industrial systems in a circular economy framework) it became apparent that many essential elements of a sustainable industry / economy are viewed very separately in science”, says Task Manager Simon Moser from Energieinstitut an der JKU Linz, Austria. “In a query, it was recognized that the keywords associated with the concepts of circular economy and a sustainable energy system, respectively, hardly overlap. According to our bibliographic analysis, industrial decarbonization is a concept that is strongly associated with a sustainable energy system, but hardly with the circular economy. Although industrial symbiosis could also bring many advantages in the energy sector (e.g. with waste heat, hydrogen), its appearance in literature primarily focuses on resources.”

In the rest of the Task duration, the participants will strive to find modelling approaches tackling more than one of these issues. Moreover, carbon flows will be characterized for important industries in order to evaluate the CCU options and CCS necessity.

Two questions to conclude 2021:

What has been the most rewarding this year?

“It was wonderful to be able to win so many actors from this field with such incredible knowledge.”

What has been the biggest challenge?

“The biggest task is now to find the overlaps in the broad field in order to enable fruitful cooperation and target-oriented exchange.”