Read on Twitter
She said "infrastructure", which was obviously my cue for a thread on #industrialclustering, why it can make deep decarbonization of industry much cheaper, and why we need specific site planning and infrastructure for it 
Read on. https://twitter.com/ClaireSeaborn/status/1350170223857577984
Read on. https://twitter.com/ClaireSeaborn/status/1350170223857577984
First, yes, light & heavy industry are harder to transition, and it's going to cost something. But it's ~31% of current global CO2 emissions, has to fall to #netzero by 2050-'70, and anything built after 2025 will likely still be operating in post 2050.
Several of the production side strategies for decarbonizing industry involve a lot of HV electricity, carbon capture & storage, hydrogen production & storage, & heat sharing systems & heat pumps. None of these things are cheap nor easy to site, & they are cheapest in big sizes.
On the other hand, new heavy industry, due to NIMBYism, is awfully hard to site. Most of it goes near older industry due to zoning laws, etc. Now what if we made this bug a feature, and start purposely locating new industry on an old site with the following extra infrastructure?
They could share: high voltage transmission; district energy heat cascading systems feeding heat pumps; CCS capture, storage and transmission; and hydrogen production and storage.
Several regions of Canada would be perfect for this: Prince Rupert, Fort Saskatchewan through Leduc, Medicine Hat, Lloydminster, Sarnia, Hamilton+, Sydney NS, Come-by-Chance NFL. All hurting industrial regions that could use a new, clean lease on life.
These industrial clusters, because they'd have hydrogen production and storage, could also provide firm power anchors to high variable renewable systems.
There's not a lot of contemporary reading, but they were a key topic of the UK's recent Net-Zero technical work https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/net-zero-technical-report/, and the IEA Future of Hydrogen https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-hydrogen.
In sum, planned industrial clustering with key new infrastructure could make decarbonizing industry a lot cheaper, and revitalize struggling communities with cleaner, healthier employment.
