Energy Flexibility Potential and Costs of the Materials- and Recycling Industry

Renewable Electricity production will strongly vary over time in the
Energy System of 2045. Simultaneously the raw materials industry
needs to have its own transition towards a more local circular economy
and from fossil carbon based energy sources to renewables. As a major
and increasingly important energy consumer, this industry might need
to adapt energy consumption to current energy availability.

In this contribution we discuss four major technical possibilities on
different time scales (Inner Energy variation, throughput variation,
scheduled production pauses, and dual power options) for power
flexibility in this sector, their characteristics with regard to grid
service and power market, and with respect to economic and
environmental impacts generated by providing and by using these
flexibility options. The contribution provides generic formulas to
compute such impacts from LCA and LCC results for stationary operation
conditions plus direct impacts of certain actions, and shows how they
depend on market conditions. It also discusses the need for energy
system models to provide predictions of flexibility requirements early
on, to allow the industry to take the right investment decisions with
respect to flexibility.

The contribution shows that while technically major flexibility
potentials exist, considerable investment is required to make them
practically available for the future energy system. It also shows that
Germany needs a considerable local hydrogen infrastructure
(production, distribution and storage) in order to sustain such
industry.