Study 25: Strategies for the decommissioning of industrial processes

The electricity grid requires constant, ‘real-time’ balancing between electricity generation and consumption in order to ensure a high-quality electricity supply and avoid the risk of blackouts.
Load shedding involves reducing consumers’ electricity demand for a defined period in response to an external signal.

Industrial demand response relies on consumption at industrial sites to provide flexibility to the electricity grid. It is taking place against a favourable backdrop driven by the increasingly significant need to balance the electricity grid and the widespread electrification of industry, which will increase the available potential for demand response. Demand response also helps to reduce the carbon content of electricity by limiting the need to activate peak generation capacity.

As early as 2018, France set itself ambitious targets for the development of demand response: 6.5 GW of contracted capacity by 2028, with an interim target of 4.5 GW in 2023 (contributions from the industrial, residential and commercial sectors). However, by 2023, the sector had not met these targets (3.9 GW by the end of 2022).

Given the gap between ambition and the actual development of the demand response sector, this study aims to provide a detailed overview of the operational implementation of demand response by type of industrial facility, to identify the main barriers to adoption, and to propose measures to achieve the demand response targets and trajectories set by the PPE and RTE.

• In order to meet these objectives, the study first sets out the industrial demand response potential estimated by ADEME in 2017 and estimates the additional potential resulting from the electrification of industrial processes, based on a previous ALLICE study.
• The study then sets out the maturity of each industrial sector in detail, based on several comparative criteria: current exploitation of the technical reserves, recoverable technical reserves and economic constraints.
• Finally, thethe study drew on concrete feedback from around fifteen industrial companies to identify the barriers to the development of demand response and to propose measures enabling industry to make an active contribution to balancing the electricity grid and thereby facilitate its decarbonisation.

To date, three groups of industrial sectors have emerged in terms of their maturity and their involvement in demand response:

• A first group for which the reduction is fully captured (e.g. the metal industry),
• A second group for which data erasure is being implemented despite economic and technical constraints (e.g. the chemical and agri-food sectors)
• A final group comprising sectors that have implemented energy-saving measures to a limited extent, if at all (e.g. plastics manufacturing).

The study also sets out seven recommendations for demand response professionals — including aggregators and electricity system operators — as well as industrial operators, with a view to improving the technical and economic conditions of the market and increasing the pool of industrial flexibility available in France.