Directions of innovation for the decarbonization of cement and steel production – A topic modeling-based analysis

Abstract

There is a vast amount of academic research on industry decarbonization in the cement and steel industries, but a systematic mapping of the relevant literature is missing to date. Filling this gap, we analyze the directions of innovation in the field by (1) creating data sets containing academic literature on industry decarbonization, by (2) structuring the identified articles topically using a topic modeling approach, and by (3) quantifying the publication volume by the underlying decarbonization option over time. Results show that research on cement and steel production has long focused on efficiency improvements and has only recently shifted toward solutions that allow for the industries’ deep decarbonization. While research on the latter still has to translate into measurable deployment of clean production technologies, trends in the energy consumption and emission intensity of the production processes point toward a positive but stagnating effect of past efficiency-focused research.