Long-term outlook

Many technologies offer long-term potential for mitigating industrial GHG emissions, but interest has focused on three areas: biological processing, use of hydrogen and nanotechnology.

Given the complexity of the industrial sector, achieving low GHG emissions is the sum of many cross-cutting and individual sector transitions. Because of the speed of capital stock turnover in at least some branches of industry, inertia by ‘technology lock-in’ may occur. Retrofitting provides opportunities in the meantime, but basic changes in technology occur only when the capital stock is installed or replaced (high agreement, much evidence) [7.12].