The opportunities and challenges to reducing industrial energy demand and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in the Chemicals sector are evaluated with a focus on the situation in the United Kingdom (UK), although the lessons learned are applicable across much of the industrialised world. This sector can be characterised as being heterogeneous; embracing a diverse range of products (including advanced materials, cleaning fluids, composites, dyes, paints, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and surfactants). It sits on the boundary between energy-intensive (EI) and non-energy-intensive (NEI) industrial sectors. The improvement potential of various technological interventions has been identified in terms of their energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Currently-available best practice technologies (BPTs) will lead to further, short-term energy and CO₂ emissions savings in chemicals processing, but the prospects for the commercial exploitation of innovative technologies by mid-21st century are far more speculative. A set of industrial decarbonisation ‘technology roadmaps’ out to the mid-21st Century are also reported, based on various alternative scenarios. These yield low-carbon transition pathways that represent future projections which match short-term and long-term (2050) targets with specific technological solutions to help meet the key energy saving and decarbonisation goals. The roadmaps’ contents were built up on the basis of the improvement potentials associated with various processes employed in the chemicals industry. They help identify the steps needed to be undertaken by developers, policy makers and other stakeholders in order to ensure the decarbonisation of the UK chemicals industry. The attainment of significant falls in carbon emissions over this period will depends critically on the adoption of a small number of key technologies [e.g., carbon capture and storage (CCS), energy efficiency techniques, and bioenergy], alongside a decarbonisation of the electricity supply.

评估化学品行业减少工业能源需求和减少二氧化碳（CO ₂）排放的机遇与挑战，重点是英国（UK）的情况，尽管所汲取的教训适用于许多工业化世界。该部门的特征可以说是异构的。包含各种产品（包括高级材料，清洁液，复合材料，染料，油漆，药品，塑料和表面活性剂）。它位于能源密集型（EI）和非能源密集型（NEI）工业部门之间的边界。已经从能源使用和温室气体的角度确定了各种技术干预措施的改进潜力。（GHG）排放量。当前可用的最佳实践技术（BPT）将导致更多的短期能源和CO ₂节省了化学品加工过程中的排放量，但到21世纪中叶对创新技术进行商业开发的前景更具投机性。根据各种替代方案，还报告了一套到21世纪中叶的工业脱碳“技术路线图”。这些产生的低碳过渡路径代表了未来的预测，将短期和长期（2050年）目标与特定的技术解决方案相匹配，以帮助实现关键的节能和脱碳目标。路线图的内容是根据与化学工业中使用的各种过程相关的改进潜力而建立的。它们有助于确定开发人员需要采取的步骤，政策制定者和其他利益相关者，以确保英国化学工业的脱碳。在此期间，碳排放量的显着下降将主要取决于少数关键技术的采用[例如，碳捕集与封存（CCS），能效技术和生物能源]，以及电力供应的脱碳。