Co-production as an Economically Feasible Pathway to Economy-Wide Electrification

A major proposal to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels is to “electrify everything”,1 allowing for low-carbon power production to replace fossil fuel oxidation.2,3 Here we conduct a techno-economic analysis of a diverse set of electrification technologies to determine the technical feasibility and economic cost of full-scale electrification. We find that battery-electric vehicles can allow for cost-neutral electrification of transportation; however, neither hydrogen nor CO2-based e-fuels are economically sustainable, even under the most optimistic assumptions. Commercial fleet vehicles are most feasibly electrifiable followed by personal vehicles, trucking, shipping, and aviation. For building-use, electric resistive heating, electric lighting, and heat pumps are sufficiently low-cost to displace fueled processes. Industry is hardest to electrify due to unfavorable thermodynamic limits of carbon-neutral chemistries and the fact that fueled processes operate near their thermodynamic energy minimums.4 Electrification, thus, would add costs when thermochemistry is replaced by single-product electrochemistry. However, industrial electrification could be cost neutral using multi-product pathways, once scale economies allow for sufficient capital expenditure (CapEx) reductions relative to single product chemistry.