Environmental assessment of electrification of food industry for Denmark and France

To align energy demand with greenhouse gas emission reduction targets set by the COP21 or the EU Green Deal, electrification is one of the most promising options. Most studies on the electrification of industrial processes focus on energy and greenhouse gas emissions, while the other potential environmental impacts have often been overlooked. Hence, the proposed work aims to highlight the pros and cons of shifting to electricity thanks to a Life Cycle Assessment approach. Industrial heat productions for the Danish and French food industries are used as case study. The reference consists in heat production based on fossil fuel (i.e. gas and oil boilers mainly) while electrical boilers, mechanical heat pumps or mechanical steam recompression solutions are considered for shift to electricity. Different electrification scenarios are considered, including levels of electrification and technological development. To identify the most relevant environmental impacts, an assessment of the food industry sectors is performed. Different scenarios are evaluated according to the selected impact categories, allowing to assess the environmental trade-offs. The results show that electrification brings us to 93 % and 58 % of the GHG emission level that can be defined as sustainable for climate change in Denmark and France, respectively. However, several important drawbacks are identified with burden shifting to other impact categories that go beyond sustainable levels, e.g. particulate emissions impacting human health with impacts 16 and 21 times higher than what can be defined as a sustainable level for France and Denmark, respectively. These findings highlight that it is difficult for one sector alone to be considered environmentally sustainable without looking at other sectors. Therefore, multi-sectoral studies should be carried out to assess the improvement potentials in each sector and identify the trade-offs between sectors in order to achieve sustainable industrial systems.