Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Directions of innovation for the decarbonization of cement and steel

production – A topic modeling-based analysis
Paul Tautorat a, b, *, Björn Lalin a, b, Tobias S. Schmidt a, c, d, Bjarne Steffen b, e
a
Energy and Technology Policy Group, ETH Zurich, Clausiusstrasse 37, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland
b
Climate Finance and Policy Group, ETH Zurich, Clausiusstrasse 37, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland
c
Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, 86 Olden Street, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
d
Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
e
Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E19-411, Cambridge, MA, 02139-4307,
United States

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Handling Editor: Cecilia Maria Villas Bôas de There is a vast amount of academic research on industry decarbonization in the cement and steel industries, but a
Almeida systematic mapping of the relevant literature is missing to date. Filling this gap, we analyze the directions of
innovation in the field by (1) creating data sets containing academic literature on industry decarbonization, by
Keywords: (2) structuring the identified articles topically using a topic modeling approach, and by (3) quantifying the
Cement industry
publication volume by the underlying decarbonization option over time. Results show that research on cement
Iron and steel industry
and steel production has long focused on efficiency improvements and has only recently shifted toward solutions
Industry decarbonization
Deep decarbonization that allow for the industries’ deep decarbonization. While research on the latter still has to translate into
Topic modeling measurable deployment of clean production technologies, trends in the energy consumption and emission in­
Latent dirichlet allocation tensity of the production processes point toward a positive but stagnating effect of past efficiency-focused
research.

1. Introduction
Climate change mitigation demands a low-carbon transition in all
sectors, including manufacturing. Among the different manufacturing
industries, energy-intense basic materials are the most emission intense.
Cement and steel1 cause particularly high emissions, each contributing
7–8% of global CO2-eq emissions (GCCA, 2021; IEA, 2020; IPCC, 2015;
Wang et al., 2021). This is not least due to a significant increase in
production of both materials since the Second World War (Van Ruijven
et al., 2016). In the period between 1950 and 2021, global cement
production increased by a factor of 30 (or 4.9% per year on average)
(Andrew, 2019; U.S. Geological Survey, 2023; 2017), and steel pro­
duction increased by a factor of 17 (or 4.1%) (Wang et al., 2021;
Worldsteel, 2022). Although emissions are stagnating in Europe and
recently in China (see, e.g., Worldsteel (2021) and Wu et al. (2022)),
capacity increases in other emerging economies could potentially lead to
a further increase: C. Chen et al. (2022) show that emissions from
cement increased on average by 3.7% annually between 1990 and 2019;
for steel, Wang et al. (2021) calculate that emissions between 1990 and
2015 increased on average by 2.9% annually; Van Ruijven et al. (2016)
forecast future emissions for both industries given different levels of
carbon pricing.
Five types of decarbonization options bear the potential to further
reduce the direct emissions from cement and steel production: (1) in­
crease of process/system efficiencies, (2) shift toward electricity-based
processes (electrification), (3) shift toward alternative fuels, (4) car­
bon capture and storage (CCS/CCU), and (5) shift to alternative raw
materials. Despite research on all five options in the context of cement
and steel production, there is still uncertainty when it comes to the
technological maturity as well as the timing of commercial availability
of the different options and accordingly their role in the future
decarbonization.

* Corresponding author. Energy and Technology Policy Group, ETH Zurich, Clausiusstrasse 37, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland.
E-mail address: paul.tautorat@gess.ethz.ch (P. Tautorat).
1
In the remainder of this article, the production of steel also includes the production of the precursor iron.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137055
Received 23 December 2022; Received in revised form 13 March 2023; Accepted 31 March 2023
Available online 7 April 2023
0959-6526/© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

To inform the research around both industries’ future decarbon­ has been achieved in the past, driven by a combination of measures. In
ization, we address the following question in the remainder of this the case of cement, the largest reductions can be traced back to effi­
paper: To what extent are different decarbonization options for cement and ciency improvements in the shift from wet to dry processing (see Fig. 1b)
steel covered by academic research?2 We do so by mapping out and sub­ (GCCA, 2021; Habert et al., 2020), or the introduction of waste heat
sequently analyzing the literature on the decarbonization of the cement recovering pre-calciners and pre-heaters (Worrell et al., 2000), alter­
and steel industries using a computer-assisted unsupervised topic native fuels as the move away from CO2-intense fuels like coal (Kääntee
modeling approach. Section 2 presents a background to the emissions et al., 2004; Rahman et al., 2015), and the change in raw materials used
and mitigation options for both industries and the applied methodology. from traditional rich-in-clinker Portland cement to blended mixes (e.g.,
In Section 3, the results are shown and decarbonization pathways dis­ see the 27 common cement types in EN 197–1 (DIN Deutsches Institut
cussed for both industries and then compared. In Section 4, conclusions für Normung e. V, 2011)), leading to an overall reduction of the clinker
are drawn from the previous discussion. content (see Fig. 1a). In the case of steel, emission reductions (cf. Fig. 2a)
were also driven by incremental improvements of various process steps
2. Materials and methods (e.g. BOF gas recovery or heat recovery) (de Beer et al., 1998) and in the
case of secondary steel production in EAFs particularly by an increase in
In the following, an overview of emissions from cement and steel the use of recycled steel4 (cf. Fig. 2b and Wang et al. (2021)). For the US,
production (Section 2.1) is presented, followed by an outline of existing Worrell et al. (2001a) quantify emission reductions for more than 50
studies on reducing emissions (Section 2.2), and a discussion of the distinct measures grouped by production step (e.g., sintering, coke
linear model of innovation (Section 2.3). The analysis conducted in the making, iron making in BFs, steelmaking in EAFs, steelmaking in BOFs).
present paper followed a two-step process. First, we developed a The decline of specific CO2 emissions, however, has stagnated in the
decarbonization framework for the manufacturing sector (Section 2.4). last few decades for cement and steel in industrialized countries, as the
We did so in order to group the identified literature into mutually potential for efficiency improvements is largely exhausted (Habert et al.,
exclusive decarbonization options defined in the framework. Second, we 2020), and the potential for a further increase in clinker substitution and
compiled a data set on industry decarbonization research for cement and steel recycling is cumbersome. The latter requires efforts along the
steel and analyzed it using topic modeling (Section 2.5). whole value chain beyond just the manufacturing itself (see, e.g., Habert
et al. (2020) for the case of cement). In addition, process emissions from
certain production steps are difficult to reduce. For Portland clinker, the
2.1. Emissions from cement and steel production
calcination of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) yielding calcium oxide (CaO)
leads to roughly 0.5 tons of CO2 per ton of clinker produced (CaCO3 →
While on average globally the production of one ton of cement emits
CaO + CO2), depending on the ratio of calcium oxide to other silicon,
about 0.63 tCO2-eq/tcement directly (GCCA, 2021), the production of a
iron, and aluminum oxides in the clinker (Worrell et al., 2001b). As long
ton of steel is even more emission intense, with 1.09 tCO2-eq/tsteel (Wang
as cement mixtures continue to be based on clinker as active material
et al., 2021) on average for the basic oxygen furnace (BOF) route and the
and emissions are not captured before their release into the atmosphere,
electric arc furnace (EAF) route. Importantly, these emissions stem not
these process emissions will inevitably occur. For primary steel pro­
only from energy conversion (i.e., the combustion of fuels) but also from
duced, process emissions occur due to fossil raw material-based reduc­
chemical reduction processes (in the following referred to as process
tion of iron ore in BFs (e.g., Fe3O4 + CO → 3FeO + CO2 for magnetite
emissions). It is this share of process emissions that differentiates cement
and carbon monoxide) and the addition of lime to remove impurities. In
and steel from other energy-intense industries (e.g., pulp and paper, or
the case of secondary steel produced in EAFs (where iron is partially or
food) that only cause energy-related emissions for process heat at
fully replaced by steel scrap), process emissions also occur due to elec­
different temperature levels (Arpagaus et al., 2018). Today, process
trode consumption (4–7 kgCO2/tsteel) and the injection of carbon (43
emissions make up roughly 60–70% of total emissions for cement (Chen
kgCO2/tsteel) during the EAF process (Echterhof, 2021; Thomson et al.,
et al., 2022; Favier et al., 2018) and ca. 50% in the case of steel3 (Bailera
2000). In addition, the cement industry is difficult to decarbonize due to
et al., 2021; Fan and Friedmann, 2021; OECD/IEA, 2001). On top of
the high temperatures needed for the calcination (850 ◦ C) and sintering
energy-related and process emissions caused directly by the industrial
(1450 ◦ C) processes (Gartner, 2004; Kääntee et al., 2004; Madeddu
production system (scope 1), both industries use significant amounts of
et al., 2020). This is not the case for the melting of steel, which in fact
electricity and can thus cause emissions in the energy system (scope 2).
In the case of steel, the EAF process is particularly electricity-intense, as
is the crushing, grinding and transportation of raw materials for cement.
This electricity consumption leads to emissions from the energy system,
whose carbon footprint varies by geography. In addition, the raw ma­
terials and fuels used by the industrial production system can be asso­
ciated with significant upstream emissions (scope 3), such as emissions
from plants producing coke used in blast furnaces (BF) from coal (Moya
and Pardo, 2013). Environmental product declarations (EPD) based on
life cycle assessments (LCA) report these emissions and additional
environmental impacts in a standardized manner allowing to compare
similar products (Burchart-Korol, 2013; International Organization for
Standardization, 2006; Moretti and Caro, 2017).
A significant reduction in specific CO2 emissions (per ton produced)

Fig. 1. Cement: Development of clinker content globally (Andrew, 2019) and

2
Analyzing two sectors (a) shows that our methodology works for different kiln type (based on information from GCCA (2021)).
sectors, and (b) allows for a comparison of the trends between the two sectors.
In addition, as elaborated, both sectors contribute 7–8% of global GHG
emissions.
3
The average share of process emissions for the steel production depends
4
among others on the share of recycled steel used and the accounting principle This production route leads to fewer emissions than the primary or inte­
applied for the use of coke in the blast furnace process. grated production, which relies on the reduction of iron ore in blast furnaces.

2
P. Tautorat et al.
Fig. 2. Steel: Development of emissions and steel recycling rate (data from
Wang et al. (2021)).
demands even higher temperatures (>1500 ◦ C (Fruehan et al., 2000))
but where the electricity-based EAF route is widely applied in industry
(Madeddu et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021).
The decarbonization of the global production of cement and steel is
an interesting case to study as it causes significant amounts of CO2
emissions, as global production volumes are not expected to decrease in
the future, and as efficiency-focused efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are
reaching their limits given the sectors’ process emissions and high
temperatures.
2.2. Reducing emissions from cement and steel production
Globally, many scholars have studied options for reducing emissions
from cement and steel. Several studies consider the decarbonization of
both industries as part of manufacturing as a whole. Bataille et al. (2018)
analyze decarbonization options for a variety of industries (pulp and
paper, chemicals, iron and steel, other metals, glass, and cement) and
conclude that non-mature technologies are not considered sufficiently in
energy models and policymaking. In a review article, Bataille, 2020
develops a set of decarbonization priorities targeting both the produc­
tion and demand sides for a similar set of industries, coming to the
conclusion that a deep decarbonization of the manufacturing sector is
only possible through a mixture of technology- and policy-focused ef­
forts. Åhman et al. (2012) analyze the Swedish manufacturing sector
and highlight that policy support has to be sector-specific and—similar
to past support regimes for renewables—has to be a mixture of RD&D
and market-developing policies. Again, in the case of Sweden, Nurdia­
wati and Urban (2021) identify six main decarbonization options,
namely demand side measures, efficiency improvements, reduction of
the carbon intensity of fuel and raw materials, electrification, CCS or
CCU, and negative emission technologies. Gerres et al. (2019) evaluate
decarbonization technologies across different industries and conclude
that it will need sector-specific breakthrough technologies on top of
those applicable across different industries (e.g., low temperature heat
pumps). They further point out that policies will play a pivotal role in
accelerating technologies’ development and deployment to overcome
long innovation cycles in the manufacturing sector and that techno­
logical uncertainty has to be reduced to allow for informed policy­
making. Napp et al. (2014) highlight that capital stock turnover limits
the diffusion speed of clean technologies in the manufacturing sector
(see also Löfgren and Rootzén (2021)) and thus increases the importance
of complying with best available technologies (BAT) standards when
building new plants.
Other researchers have compared two or more industries. Hasanbeigi
et al. (2012) assess the efficiency improvement and emission reduction
potentials for cement and steel. Bataille, 2020 and Fennell et al. (2022)
provide an overview of approaches to the decarbonization of both in­
dustries. Van Ruijven et al. (2016) study projections for energy use in
both industries. Again, others consider one sector in isolation. Öhman
et al. (2022) analyze hydrogen’s potential role in the decarbonization of
the European steel industry. Fan and Friedmann (2021) review
3
Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055
technological options for clean steel, concluding that multiple
competing options for clean steel exist, but they note that many of them
still face technical challenges. Focusing on the steel industry and going
beyond technical approaches, Wang et al. (2021) outline a holistic
approach to reducing emissions by Paris Agreement-compatible mag­
nitudes. The authors emphasize the importance of differentiating
regionally and temporally when assessing decarbonization options, the
need to replace emission-intense blast furnaces well before their tech­
nical end of life, the potential of recycling and demand reduction, and
the role of international agreements in creating a market for green steel.
Worrell et al. (2001b) and Fennell et al. (2021) list decarbonization
options for the global cement industry, namely efficiency improvements,
use of low-carbon fuels, change of cement composition, and CO2
removal.5 Korczak et al. (2022) review decarbonization options for
non-metallic minerals and their potential for the European Union. Favier
et al. (2018) deliver an extensive overview of the decarbonization op­
tions along the whole cement and concrete value chain, from the pro­
duction of cement to the demolition of infrastructure built from
concrete. Similarly Marsh et al. (2022) study circular economy aspects
for concrete from a system perspective going beyond just technical
considerations. Focusing on Switzerland, Obrist et al. (2021) investigate
pathways for the decarbonization of the cement industry and their in­
fluence on the energy system.
In addition to peer-reviewed academic literature, the EU Joint
Research Centre’s technical reports and reference documents on BATs
provide a comprehensive overview for both industries (Marmier, 2023;
Remus et al., 2013; Schorcht et al., 2013; Somers, 2022). Furthermore,
reports by different national and international industry associations
outline pathways toward net zero in 2050 (see, e.g., Cembureau (2020)
and EUROFER (2019, 2013) for cement and steel in Europe or Johnson
et al. (2021) and Johnson et al. (2020) for a cross-industry overview of
existing roadmaps). The most recent report by the IEA (2022), prepared
for the G7 on the decarbonization of heavy industry, is one of many
reports from international organizations on the topic.
Despite the plethora of research on how to decarbonize the cement
and steel industry (be it from a technical, economic, or policy perspec­
tive), there is still uncertainty when it comes to the technological
maturity as well as the timing of commercial availability of the different
options. Compared to other sectors, further innovation is indispensable
for decarbonization, and the speed of innovation is inherently uncertain.
This technological uncertainty is especially pronounced for early-stage
technologies and translates into uncertainties about technologies’
abatement costs and their implications for the energy system (Bataille
et al., 2018; Schmidt, 2021). This, in turn, makes it difficult for the
energy research community to reliably estimate industry-specific
abatement cost curves that educate energy system models, industry’s
energy use (Edelenbosch et al., 2017; Van Ruijven et al., 2016), or to
assess investment demands for the transition of the industry sector. The
adoption rate of CCS and the direct reduced iron (DRI) production route,
for example, have significant implications for the energy system. A
widespread application of CCS in the steel industry would increase the
demand for heat as well as CO2 transport and storage infrastructure
(Ostovari et al., 2022), whereas hydrogen-based DRI steel production
would lead to a significant demand for (green) hydrogen and electricity
(Lechtenböhmer et al., 2016). Hence, an improved understanding of
cement and steel decarbonization pathways is needed not just for
planning in these industries but also for planning in the energy system at
large.
5
Worrell et al. were among the first to give a comprehensive overview of
deep decarbonization options for the cement industry at a time
when—according to the findings presented in section 3.1.2. —the majority of
academic publications (~75%) still focused on efficiency improvements.
P. Tautorat et al.
2.3. Vast literature on emissions reduction measures and knowledge
diffusion
In addition to existing reviews of decarbonization pathways, a vast
amount of research addresses individual decarbonization (sub-)options
or, in the case of basic research, sometimes only single aspects or
mechanisms of these options. While this basic research often only
translates into the deployment of clean production equipment in the far
future, the link between research on and deployment of new technolo­
gies is well established in the literature (it is sometimes described
through the linear model of innovation (Godin, 2005), cf. Fig. 3). For
example, Balconi et al. (2010) state: “new science is the initiating point, in
a process of learning leading, after years, to marketable new products and
applications, might remain an acceptable and useful approximation […].”
The first connection between basic research and development is often
analyzed by looking at the effect of academic publications on patent
filings, as, for example, done by Popp (2016) or Probst et al. (2021). The
second part of connecting development and deployment is typically
researched by analyzing the impact of patents on the economic perfor­
mance of firms (e.g., Artz et al. (2010)) or on the cost and performance
of a technology (e.g., Huenteler et al. (2016) and Malhotra et al.,
(2021)).
A comprehensive landscape of industry decarbonization research (cf.
Fig. 3.) could be a starting point for the energy system modeling com­
munity to obtain a better overview of existing options that could
contribute to the industries’ deep decarbonization and that could lead to
competing pathways with different infrastructure necessities (Fan and
Friedmann, 2021; Patisson et al., 2021).
However, it proves difficult to perform a holistic analysis of decades
of research manually, given the multitude of competing decarbonization
options per sector, the increasing amount of research in general (Fire
and Guestrin, 2019), and the pace at which new articles are published in
the field. Automated analyses of academic literature can overcome this
challenge, improve the transparency of existing research, structure it
topically, and thereby make it more useable for subsequent research.
Advances in machine learning have led to a growing number of scholars
using topic modeling in this context. The topic modeling approach was
used in academic literature to improve the understanding of large
amounts of literature in, among others, the fields of climate change
(Callaghan et al., 2020), climate change and cities (Lamb et al., 2018),
the impact of climate change on health (Berrang-Ford et al., 2021),
climate impact (Callaghan et al., 2021), energy consumption and social
aspects of climate change (Creutzig et al., 2021), adaptation research
(Sietsma et al., 2021), the energy transition (Lu and Nemet, 2020), green
buildings (Wu et al., 2021), circular economy (Mahanty et al., 2021;
Ranjbari et al., 2021), environmental science and engineering (Pala­
nichamy et al., 2021), cleaner production (Schober et al., 2018), diffu­
sion speed of academic research (Probst et al., 2021), and public opinion
on climate solutions (Schmid and Guinaudeau, 2022). However, a
rigorous topic modeling analysis for the industry decarbonization
literature is missing to date. The topic modeling approach goes beyond a
simple keyword search on Google Scholar or Scopus as it allows to
identify the most relevant topics in the field in a generative manner (i.e.
the topics are not manually defined but automatically generated by the
algorithm based on text similarity), and to quantify the relevance of the
created topics over time.
Fig. 3. Industry decarbonization research as input for energy system modeling.
4
Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055
2.4. Decarbonization framework
A universally applicable framework for grouping options for the
decarbonization of the manufacturing sector was developed (cf. Fig. 4)
similar to existing frameworks on other industries, as for example, by
Oliveira and Van Dril (2021) in the context of the decarbonization of the
production of chemicals. At the first level, the framework differentiates
scope 1 and scope 2 emissions. Scope 2 emissions occur in the energy
system during the production of useable energy used in the industrial
production system (i.e., heat and power). Given that the deep decar­
bonization of the energy system is studied more comprehensively and
that pathways for deep decarbonization exist (Hansen et al., 2019), we
focus on options to reduce scope 1 emissions; that is, those directly
emitted by industrial plants. Five types of supply-side decarbonization
options bear the potential to reduce these direct emissions of the in­
dustrial production system (see Appendices 5.5. for a more detailed
break-down): (1) increase of process/system efficiencies (see, e.g.,
Worrell et al. (2000) or Cantini et al. (2021)), (2) shift toward
electricity-based processes (electrification, see, e.g., Burman and Eng­
vall (2019) and Buttress et al. (2015)), (3) shift toward alternative fuels
(see, e.g., Murray and Price (2008)), (4) carbon capture and storage (see,
e.g., Olabi et al. (2022), Plaza et al. (2020), Jakobsen et al. (2017),
Voldsund et al. (2019), and Gardarsdottir et al. (2019)) or use (see, e.g.,
Ostovari et al. (2021) and Jang et al. (2016)), and (5) shift to alternative
raw materials (see e.g., Sharma et al. (2021) and Scrivener et al. (2018)).
These options have very divergent impacts on the energy system.
While an increase of efficiencies (1) simply decreases the demand for
energy (be it in the form of fuels or electricity), an electrification of fuel-
based processes (2) leads to a decrease in the demand for substituted
fuels and an increase in the demand for electricity and grid infrastruc­
ture accordingly. A shift to alternative fuels (3) leads to a higher demand
for alternative fuels (be it biogenic, synthetic, or low-carbon fossil) and
the respective transport infrastructure but, in turn, also to a lower de­
mand for fossil fuels replaced. CSS and CCU (4) lead to an increased
energy demand and a need for an ecosystem and infrastructure to
transport, sequester, or use the captured CO2. Finally, a shift to alter­
native raw materials (5) (e.g., by using hydrogen to reduce iron ore in
the steel industry or different clays in the cement industry) leads to
changes in material needs and the respective transport infrastructure.
Note that these levers can partly be combined but also that some levers
can have positive or negative effects on the other levers (e.g., reduced
efficiency due to CCS).
2.5. Clustering existing literature by topic
2.5.1. Creation of data sets
Two data sets for research articles on the decarbonization of the
cement and steel industries were created in a highly automated
approach implemented in Python based on Elsevier’s Scopus biblio­
graphic database (as illustrated in the blue part of Fig. 5). Scopus was
chosen (cf. ‘A’ in Fig. 5), as it offers a good mix of completeness and
usability. Google Scholar and Web of Science—two other widely used
databases—were not used as Google Scholar does not allow for an API-
based access of the database as described by Martín-Martín et al. (2018)
and query results are typically not replicable due to the structure of the
database, and Web Of Science is missing ca. 25% of the journal articles
included in Scopus whereas the other way around Scopus only lacks less
than ca. 3% of Web Of Science’s journal articles (see Visser et al. (2021)
for a comparison of different bibliographic data sources). Full texts (e.g.,
available from ScienceDirect, another Elsevier database that provides
full texts for a subset of the publications included in Scopus) were not
used in the final implementation, as they did not notably improve the
quality of the results. For a comparison of both approaches, see, for
example, Syed and Spruit (2017) who reach similar results.
Bibliographic information was automatically downloaded via the
provided Scopus application programming interface (API) using
P. Tautorat et al.
Fig. 4. Overview of decarbonization options for the industrial production system.
Fig. 5. Overview of the process for topic modeling.
manually defined sector-specific search queries (‘B’ in Fig. 5, see
Appendices 5.3.1. and 5.4.1.). Publications were limited to peer-
reviewed journals and conference articles published in English before
2022 in one of the following research areas (as defined by Scopus):
Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Energy, Material Sci­
ence, and Multidisciplinary. Publications were further limited to those
covering the decarbonization of the industrial production system by
searching the publications’ titles, abstracts, and keywords for a combi­
nation of terms referring to decarbonization (e.g., CO2 reduction or en­
ergy consumption) and others referring to industrial production (e.g.,
process or factory). To limit publications to the cement and steel in­
dustries, publications had to include the terms cement or concrete and
iron or steel, respectively (see, e.g., Jayabalasingham et al. (2019) for a
similar approach in the context of UN Sustainable Development Goals).
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Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055
In addition, duplicates were removed (‘C’ in Fig. 5) by a comparison of
authors, titles, and abstracts.6 The completeness and relevance of arti­
cles in the samples were tested manually, and the search query was
improved iteratively (‘D,’ ‘E’ in Fig. 5). The final assessment of
completeness was conducted by testing whether selected references
from a review paper cited in Section 2.1 were included in the sample. In
the case of cement, 16 out of 18 articles (89%) cited by Habert et al.
(2020) and deemed relevant by the authors were included in the sample.
For steel, 16 out of 22 articles (73%) cited by Fan and Friedmann (2021)
were included in the sample. This stepwise reduction resulted in the first
6
Most often, duplicates result from articles being published in conference
proceedings as well as peer-reviewed journals.
P. Tautorat et al.
original data set containing 5564 articles for cement and 3949 articles for
steel (see Appendices 5.3.1. and 5.4.1.).
In the case of cement, most articles in this data set are published in
“Construction and Building Materials” (395 out of 5,564, or 7%),
“Journal of Cleaner Production” (390, or 7%), and “IOP Conference
Series: Materials Science and Engineering” (159, or 3%). In terms of
location, most articles were published by a first author based in India
(623, or 11%), China (619, or 11%), and the United States of America
(502, or 9%). In the case of steel, most articles were published in “ISIJ
International” (179 out of 3,949, or 5%), “Journal of Cleaner Produc­
tion” (172, or 4%), and “Energy” (107, or 3%). Most articles were
published by a first author based in China (831, or 21%), Japan (351, or
9%), and the United States of America (322, or 8%). The articles on
cement are slightly less concentrated than those on steel, with 53% of
articles going back to the top 10 countries, compared to 65% for steel
(see Appendices 5.3.2. and 5.4.2. for details).
2.5.2. Topic modeling
The two created data sets were further processed and analyzed using
a semi-automated approach based on unsupervised learning (see the
green part in Fig. 5). More specifically, topic models were built based on
Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). This algorithm aggregates articles
from a sample into categories—so-called topics—by identifying the
underlying structures in the texts.
First, the titles, abstracts, and keywords of all articles in the two data
sets were cleaned with the help of the Python package SpaCy (Honnibal
et al., 2020); that is, irrelevant phrases, stop words, numbers, and
punctuation characters were removed, and different word variants were
lemmatized (‘F’ in Fig. 5).
A so-called bag-of-words is created per sector by combining all to­
kens (in this case unigrams and bigrams) contained in the cleaned titles,
abstracts, and keywords. This approach neglects the words’ order in the
analyzed articles (see Blei et al. (2003) for details). To improve the
following topic modeling, this bag-of-words was further reduced by
removing tokens that either occur very seldom (in less than five articles)
or very frequently (in more than 30% of all articles for cement and 40%
of all articles for steel). These thresholds were chosen iteratively and
were based on a manual review of the token frequency, following the
idea of excluding as many irrelevant tokens as possible without falsely
excluding any relevant ones (‘G’ in Fig. 5). This resulted in a
bag-of-words containing 23,965 tokens for cement and 16,332 for steel.
Topic models were created using the LDA approach (‘H’ in Fig. 5), as
it is widely used and well understood (Asmussen and Møller, 2019). It
follows the basic idea that each article can be represented by a defined
number of topics, which in turn each consists of a different probabilistic
distribution of the same set of tokens (see Blei et al. (2003) for details).
The LDA approach was implemented using the Python package Sci-Kit
learn (Pedregosa et al., 2011).
The topic model was improved iteratively by varying the number of
topics (‘I’ in Fig. 5) and reviewing the fit of the topics based on the most
prevalent tokens (‘J’ in Fig. 5). To obtain a first starting point for a
reasonable number of topics, the perplexity (Chen and Wang, 2016) and
coherence (Mimno et al., 2011) scores were calculated for a variety of
configurations using the Python package tmtoolkit (Konrad, 2022). This
approach resulted in 17 topics being chosen for both industries. The
topics were named based on the most frequent tokens and articles with
the strongest affiliation to the respective topic (‘K’ in Fig. 5). Articles
were excluded from the original sample if the dominant topic contrib­
uted 40% or less to the content of the publication (‘L’ in Fig. 5), leading
to 3525 out of the original 5564 articles (or 63%) on cement being
assigned to a topic. In the case of steel, this step excluded 998 articles,
leading to 2951 out of the total 3949 articles (or 75%) being included in
the final data set.
The topics’ fit were tested (‘J’ in Fig. 5) by reviewing five randomly
drawn articles per topic. For cement, 63 out of 85 articles (or 74%) were
correctly included in the data set; that is, they covered topics associated
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Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055
with the decarbonization of cement production. Out of the 63 articles
tested, 54, or 86%, were assigned to the correct topic (see Appendix
5.3.4. for details). For steel, 51 of the 85 articles (or 60%) were correctly
included in the data set. Out of the 51 articles tested, 41, or 80%, were
assigned to the correct topic (see Appendix 5.4.4. for details). In general
the accuracy of the LDA approach (i.e. the share of articles correctly
assigned to a topic) is highly dependent on the quality of the data set (i.e.
the share of articles correctly included in the data set).
2.5.3. Interpretation and grouping of topics
In the next step, the topics were described and matched to the five
decarbonization options introduced in Section 2.4 (‘M’ in Fig. 5). Topics
that did not refer to any of the five options were labeled as “Other”. To
make an interpretation of the results easier, articles were grouped in
periods of five years, with 1982–1986 being the first and 2017–2021
being the last period studied.
To interpret the quantitative results and put them into perspective, it
is important to understand the sectoral specificities of each option.
While, for example, many materials-focused solutions might be specific
to the cement sector and do not contribute to decarbonization in other
sectors, CCS is less specific to the cement sector, with much research on
CCS conducted in the context of the energy system or other industries
like steel. This research exists but might not be included in the created
data set due to missing references to the cement industry.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. The cement industry
3.1.1. Identified topics
Seventeen topics are identified for the cement industry (cf. Table 1),
with most articles (752 out of 3,525, or 21%) assigned to topic 10,
“Alternative raw materials,” and topic 2, “Efficiency improvements”
(452, or 13%). The least number of articles are assigned to topic 15,
“Reinforced concrete elements,” (32, or 1%) and topic 13, “Miscella­
neous” (62, or 2%). Some of the identified topics can be assigned to
specific steps of the cement value chain (e.g., topic 3, “Grinding of raw
materials,” cf. Fig. 6.), whereas other topics are less specific (e.g., topic
2, “Efficiency improvements”). Six of the identified topics do not
necessarily contribute to the reduction of the scope 1 emissions from the
industrial production system: topic 11, “Composites containing
cement”, topic 12, “Durability of cement types”, topic 14, “Construction
emissions,” which covers emissions from the whole construction process
beyond just those from the production of cement, topic 15, “Reinforced
concrete elements,” topic 16, “Carbonation and hydration in concrete,”
and topic 17, “Life cycle assessment,” which again considers emissions
beyond those from the industrial production system. These six topics,
together with topic 13, “Miscellaneous,” are categorized as “Other” and
are not considered in the following descriptive statistics.
3.1.2. Identified topics over time
The number of articles allocated to the five decarbonization options
increased significantly over time, from 22 in the period of 1982–1986 to
1317 for 2017–2021 (cf. Fig. 7a). From 2002 onwards, the number of
articles at least doubled on a period-to-period basis. The largest part of
this increase goes back to topics 2, “Efficiency improvements,” 10,
“Alternative raw materials,” and 5, “Carbon capture and storage/use,”
to which 854 articles (65%) are assigned in the period from 2017 to
2021. In the first three periods—a time of global production capacity
expansion—most articles are assigned to topic 4, “Grinding of raw ma­
terials”. This is in line with a reported shift in grinding equipment from
tube mills to more efficient roller mills and high-pressure grinding rolls
(Patzelt, 1992).
Efficiency measures have been widely applied and often analyzed at
the plant or country level (see, e.g., Zuberi and Patel (2017) for
Switzerland), leading to a high number of articles on topic 2, “Efficiency
P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

Table 1
Cement: Number of articles per topic.
Topic (description) Decarbonization option
Number of articles

1. Waste heat recovery (using waste heat to increase efficiency and use of waste as alternative fuel) 1 – Efficiency
111 (3%)
2. Efficiency improvements (assessing options to increase the sector’s efficiency and reduce its emissions) 1 – Efficiency
452 (13%)
3. Grinding of raw materials (saving electricity by improving grinding processes) 1 – Efficiency
215 (6%)
4. Process modeling for alternative fuels (modeling production processes with the goal of switching fuels and reducing emissions) 3 – Alternative fuels
226 (6%)
5. Carbon capture and storage/use (applying different carbon capture and storage/use technologies to reduce emissions) 4 – CCS/CCU
266 (8%)
6. Sequestration of CO2 (researching the injection and storage of CO2 in gas fields) 4 – CCS/CCU
153 (4%)
7. CSA cements (production and (environmental) properties of calcium sulfoaluminate (CSA) cement) 5 – Alternative raw materials
104 (3%)
8. Fly ash as alternative raw material (using fly ash as alternative input to cement to reduce the amount of CO2-intense clinker) 5 – Alternative raw materials
209 (6%)
9. Cement mortars based on alternative raw materials (performance of different cement mortar mixtures) 5 – Alternative raw materials
87 (2%)
10. Alternative raw materials (using alternative materials as alternative input to cement to reduce the amount of CO2-intense clinker) 5 – Alternative raw materials
752 (21%)
11. Composites containing cement (properties of composite materials containing cement) 6 – Other
130 (4%)
12. Durability of cement types (researching the durability of different (supplementary cementitious materials-based) cements) 6 – Other
90 (3%)
13. Miscellaneous (not applicable: no overarching topic evident) 6 – Other
62 (2%)
14. Construction emissions (lowering emissions associated with the use of concrete in the construction process) 6 – Other
232 (7%)
15. Reinforced concrete elements (researching the performance of different (steel-)reinforced structural (green) concrete elements) 6 – Other
32 (1%)
16. Carbonation and hydration in concrete (researching material compositions’ influence on hydration and carbonation processes) 6 – Other
206 (6%)
17. Life cycle assessment (assessing the life cycle emissions of the construction sector (incl. the use of cement) to reduce emissions) 6 – Other
198 (6%)
Sum 3525 (100%)

improvements”. The increase in research on topic 10 on “Alternative
raw materials” (and also the similar topics 7, 8, and 9) is in line with the
observed reduction in average clinker content globally from over 90% in
the 1970s to below 70% today (Andrew, 2019). The abundance of
alternative raw materials varies heavily geographically, increasing the
need for local analyses and leading to even more articles in this field. In
addition, research on alternative cement and concrete mixtures is cheap
compared to research on, for example, complex CCS installations,
allowing for research in countries and at research institutes with limited
budgets. The increase in research on topic 1, “Waste heat recovery,”
manifests in the reduction of energy demand per ton of clinker produced
(the primary energy used for the production of one ton of cement
reduced from 7.9 GJ in the beginning of the 1970s to ca. 5.6 GJ in 1997
in the US (Worrell et al., 2000)) and, for example, the increased use of
pre-heaters. Pre-heaters utilize waste heat from the sintering process (up
to 1450 ◦ C) in the pre-heating of raw materials as well as the calcination
process and thereby improve the thermodynamic efficiency of the pro­
duction process.

3.1.3. Identified topics grouped by decarbonization option

Analyzing the number of articles on a more aggregate level—that is,
after grouping topics (cf. column “decarbonization option” in Table 1 as
well as Table 2)—the picture is less fragmented. Most articles are
associated with the two decarbonization options “Efficiency” (778, or
22%) and “Alternative raw materials” (1,152, or 33%). Fewer articles
are associated with the decarbonization option “CCS/CCU” (419, or
12%). Articles pooled in “Other” (950, or 27%) do not necessarily
analyze the industrial production system itself but rather subsequent
steps of the value chain or the industry holistically. During the period
under review, research on alternative raw materials always contributed
more than 10% of total articles but increased significantly in the last 20
years, making up 59% in the last period (cf. Fig. 7b). Research on CCS/
CCU in the cement industry has also accelerated in the last two decades,
contributing only five out of 67 articles in the period from 1997 to 2001
(8%) but 192 out of 1317 (15%) in the period from 2017 to 2021 (cf.
Fig. 7a).

Fig. 6. Cement: Topics allocated to steps of the cement value chain (based on
Habert et al. (2020)).

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P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

production system, namely topic 13, “Steel-reinforced concrete,” which

considers the (environmental) properties of concrete, which is often
reinforced by steel rods, topic 16, “Emissions of the steel industry,” and
topic 17, “LCA of construction materials”. These three, together with
two topics named “Miscellaneous,” for which no overarching theme
could be identified, are not considered in the following quantitative
analyses.

3.2.2. Identified topics over time

The number of articles allocated to the five decarbonization options
increased significantly over time, from 45 in the period of 1982–1986 to
926 for 2017–2021 (cf. Fig. 9a). None of the topics seems to be strikingly
dominant, with topic 8, “Improvement of efficiency,” contributing the
most articles overall (20%) as well as in the last period studied (20%).
What is remarkable is the increase in topics 10, “Carbon capture and
storage/use,” and 11, “Carbonation of steel slag,” from 2002 onwards.
Both topics did not contribute any articles in the period of 1997–2001,
but together they made up 16% of the articles in the last period.

3.2.3. Identified topics grouped by decarbonization option

Fig. 7. Cement: Number of articles per topic and decarbonization option
over time.
3.2. The steel industry
3.2.1. Identified topics
Seventeen topics are identified for the steel industry (cf. Table 3)
with most articles (598 out of 2,951, or 20%) assigned to topic 8,
“Improvement of efficiency,” as well as topic 4, “Improvement of rolling
process,” (346, or 12%) and the least (33, or 1%) to topic 16, “Emissions
of the steel industry,” and topic 12, “Alternative reduction materials”
(48, or 2%). Some of the identified topics can be assigned to specific
steps of the steel value chain (e.g., topic 4, “Improvement of rolling
process,” cf. Fig. 8), whereas other topics are less specific (e.g., topic 1,
“Waste heat recovery”). Three of the identified topics are not directly
associated with the reduction of scope 1 emissions from the industrial
When grouped together, it is evident that efficiency-focused research
has dominated in the period under review (cf. Fig. 9b). This is in line
with reported efficiency improvements in the past. On a global average,
combined scope 1 and 2 emissions reduced from 2.5 to 1.7 tCO2/tsteel or
ca. one-third in the period from 1982 to 2001 (cf. Fig. 2a) based on
replacements of open-hearth furnaces with basic oxygen furnaces and
incremental measures like scrap preheating or improved bath stirring
(de Beer et al., 1998; Wang et al., 2021). The observed increase in the
share of secondary steel production (cf. Fig. 2b) is in line with past
research on the EAF process. Despite continuous research on efficiency
improvements, the emission intensity has stagnated since the early
2000s (cf. Fig. 2a). It is since this turning point that research focusing on
the deep decarbonization of the steel industry has played an increasingly
important role (cf. Fig. 9b). Among this deep decarbonization research,
it is especially research on CCS/CCU, alternative materials (which
include hydrogen-based steel production), and electrification that is
conducted. From the data presented, however, articles on CCS/CCU
(16% for 2017–2021) outnumber those on alternative materials (2% for
2017–2021) and Electrification (5% for 2017–2021). On the one hand
this is surprising, as it seems that announcements from steelmakers
around hydrogen steel seem to dominate the current public debate. As a
case in point, the Green Steel Tracker (Vogl et al., 2021)—a database of
clean steel projects globally—lists 33 projects with the aim of imple­
menting hydrogen-based direct reduction (H-DR) but only four
CCS/CCU projects as of March 2023. On the other hand, H-DR is only an
adaptation of the widely used natural gas-based direct reduction,
whereas CCS/CCU is a new concept missing a track-record in the iron
and steel industry and thus has been researched more extensively in the
past.
3.3. Comparison of both industries

Table 2 Until today, research on efficiency improvements contributed the

Number of articles per decarbonization option. lion’s share of decarbonization research in the steel industry (making up
67%). In the cement industry, both efficiency- and raw material-focused
Number Decarbonization Number of articles Number of articles
option cement steel research played an important role, making up 22% and 33%, respec­
tively. Recently, however, cement research has been increasingly
1 Efficiency 778 (22%) 1988 (67%)
2 Electrification not availablea 165 (6%)
dominated by raw materials-focused studies. In both industries, deep
3 Alternative fuels 226 (6%) not availablea decarbonization research—in contrast to merely efficiency-focu­
4 CCS/CCU 419 (12%) 348 (12%) sed—has generally gained in importance in the last 20 years. In the last
5 Alternative raw 1152 (33%) 48 (2%) period studied, CCS/CCU contributed only slightly more articles for steel
materials
than for cement (16% vs. 15%), which is interesting, as in the steel
6 Other 950 (27%) 402 (14%)
industry—in contrast to cement—deep decarbonization would be
Sum 3525 (100%) 2951 (100%) possible without CCS/CCU via non fossil materials-based reduction of
a
As none of the identified topics is associated with this decarbonization iron ore or electrowinning in combination with electric furnaces. Still,
option. CCS seems to be an important option that has been researched for steel,

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P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

Table 3
Steel: Number of articles per topic (* denotes topics improving the BOF route).
Topic (description) Decarbonization option
Number of articles

1. Waste heat recovery (recovering heat at different production steps to save energy and reduce emissions) 1 – Efficiency
150 (5%)
2. Improvement of sintering process* (reducing emissions via improvements in the sintering process) 1 – Efficiency
51 (2%)
3. Improvement of (re-)heating process & flash ironmaking (Reducing emissions through efficiency improvements for heating and flash processes) 1 – Efficiency
58 (2%)
4. Improvement of rolling process (reducing emissions through efficiency improvements for the rolling and casting processes) 1 – Efficiency
346 (12%)
5. Improvement via modeling (reducing energy demand and emissions through modeling of different production steps) 1 – Efficiency
243 (8%)
6. Recycling of blast furnace gas* (decreasing energy and raw material demand through recycling of blast furnace gas) 1 – Efficiency
287 (10%)
7. Improvement of reduction process (reducing emissions through efficiency improvements for the reduction of iron ore) 1 – Efficiency
255 (9%)
8. Improvement of efficiency (reducing emissions through efficiency improvements at different process steps) 1 – Efficiency
598 (20%)
9. Improvement of EAF process (reducing energy demand and process emissions from the EAF process) 2 – Electrification
165 (6%)
10. Carbon capture and storage/use (applying different carbon capture and storage/use technologies to reduce emissions) 4 – CCS/CCU
171 (6%)
11. Carbonation of steel slag (reducing emissions through sequestration of CO2 in steel slag) 4 – CCS/CCU
177 (6%)
12. Alternative reduction materials (lowering process emissions by reducing iron ore using alternative (biogenic or renewable) raw materials (e.g., 5 – Alternative raw
hydrogen)) materials
48 (2%)
13. Steel-reinforced concrete (Investigating (environmental) properties of steel-reinforced concrete) 6 – Other
122 (4%)
14. Miscellaneous (not applicable: no overarching topic evident) 6 – Other
82 (3%)
15. Miscellaneous (not applicable: no overarching topic evident) 6 – Other
52 (2%)
16. Emissions of the steel industry (increasing the transparency of emissions (in terms of geographies and process steps)) 6 – Other
33 (1%)
17. LCA of construction materials (increasing the transparency of emissions of (often steel-containing) construction materials) 6 – Other
113 (4%)
Sum 2951 (100%)

4. Conclusions

Our analysis applied machine learning to analyze the directions of

innovation for cement and steel production based on 9513 academic
articles. Our results show a shift from efficiency-focused research toward
CCS/CCU- (cement and steel) and alternative raw materials-focused
research (mostly cement).
It should, however, be mentioned that the approach followed in this
paper is not without limitations. Whereas the topic model’s accuracy
allows for capturing overarching trends in the research landscape, it is
not necessarily suited for a precise quantification of the number of ar­
ticles for each topic. Two factors can influence accuracy negatively: first,
reducing the number of topics to a level that allows for an easy inter­
pretation (in our case 17), and second, including too many articles in the
samples for the sake of increasing completeness.
Efficiency improvements alone will not reduce emissions from the
industrial production system to Paris Agreement-compatible levels. In
fact, emissions reductions in both sectors have been stagnating recently.
To achieve a deep decarbonization of the industry sector, more radical
technological change is needed. In this context, and considering the
Fig. 8. Steel: Topics allocated to process steps of the steel value chain (based on
basic idea of the ‘linear model of innovation’ that research eventually
Wang et al. (2021); * denotes topics improving the BOF route).
translates into deployment of new technologies (cf. Fig. 3), our results
are encouraging. The direction of research shifted toward deep decar­
which might be due to maturity or economic considerations. At the same
bonization options two decades ago. In particular, research on CCS/
time, this means that for steel, there is considerable research on two
CCU, alternative raw materials, and electrification can be expected to
different options that lead to pathways with very different infrastructure
lead to emission reductions in the future. An electrification of steel
needs.
production via EAFs, however, is constrained by, e.g., the availability
and purity of steel scrap.
However, research on new technologies alone is insufficient. There is

9
P. Tautorat et al.
Fig. 9. Steel: Number of articles per topic over time (* denotes topics
improving the BOF route).
a need to create an investment environment conducive to the wide­
spread deployment of newly developed technologies. This includes, in
particular, the provision of respective infrastructure as well as policies
that help overcome risks and potential cost disadvantages compared to
incumbent technologies, thereby overcoming what is often coined as the
‘valley of death’ between innovation and diffusion of a technology. In
the case of CCS, policies were simply not stringent enough to justify the
technology’s abatement costs in the past and thus CCS plans often
remained plans. In Europe, however, where the Emissions Trading
System includes cement and steel plants since its first phase in 2005,
after years of low levels carbon prices have recently surpassed the mark
of 100 euros per ton—a level that is in the range of reported CCS
abatement costs. So-called Carbon Contracts for Difference are discussed
to de-risk investments in clean technologies like CCS even further, by
fixing the carbon price for a certain period of time. Deployment can also
be financially supported through grants or tax credits, as further
strengthened in the US through the Inflation Reduction Act. The
10
Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055
uncertainties around the extension of grid infrastructure—be it the
power grid for electricity-hungry EAFs, hydrogen transport infrastruc­
ture to enable H-DR, or carbon transport infrastructure for CCS/CCU­
—also impede the deployment of technically mature technologies until
today and should be targeted by policy makers. In any case, all policy
intervention should be carefully evaluated ex-ante, to assess both their
effectiveness in fostering deployment of new technologies, efficiency w.
r.t. investments from the public purse, and potential unintended con­
sequences (e.g., effects on market structures, employment, and path
dependencies for the low-carbon transition in general).
Despite the amount of research on CCS/CCU and alternative raw
materials presented in Section 3, the associated decarbonization path­
ways leave room for ambitious future industry decarbonization
research. While, for example, the capture part for CCS/CCU is compar­
atively well researched, there is not much research available on future
CO2 transport ecosystems. In terms of alternative raw materials, future
research should address the challenges of further increasing scrap rates
in the steel industry and further reducing the use of clinker in the con­
struction industry. In addition, the fact that there are two different
pathways (hydrogen- and CCS-focused) researched for the steel industry
with heavily diverging infrastructure needs (hydrogen production/
import, transport, and storage vs. CO2 transport and storage) highlights
the importance of more research comparing both pathways.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Paul Tautorat: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Valida­
tion, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing –
review & editing, Visualization. Björn Lalin: Methodology, Software,
Validation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing – review & editing.
Tobias S. Schmidt: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review &
editing, Funding acquisition. Bjarne Steffen: Conceptualization, Su­
pervision, Writing – review & editing, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy
[contract number: SI/502114–01], but the authors bear the full re­
sponsibility for the content of the article as well as the conclusions and
findings presented. The authors would like to thank members of the
Energy and Technology Policy Group as well as the Climate Finance and
Policy Group at ETH for their valuable feedback on an earlier draft of the
paper.
P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

5. Appendices

5.1. List of figures

Fig. 10. Cement: Stepwise reduction of literature corpus 32.

Fig. 11. Cement: Overview of most important tokens per topics 35.
Fig. 12. Steel: Stepwise reduction of literature corpus 37.
Fig. 13. Steel: Overview of most important tokens per topics 40.
Fig. 14. Break-down of the five decarbonization options 42.

5.2. List of tables

Table 4 Cement: Number of articles by publication source 33.

Table 5 Cement: Number of articles by country 33.
Table 6 Cement: Most cited articles in the sample 34.
Table 7 Cement: Validation of relevance and topic modeling 36.
Table 8 Steel: Number of articles by publication source 38.
Table 9 Steel: Number of articles by country 38.
Table 10 Steel: Most cited articles in the sample 39.
Table 11 Steel: Validation of relevance and topic modeling 41.

5.3. Cement production

5.3.1. Creation of data sample

Fig. 10. Cement: Stepwise reduction of literature corpus (Abbreviations: chem = Chemistry, ceng = Chemical Engineering, engi = Engineering, ener = Energy, mate
= Material Science, and mult = Multidisciplinary).

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P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

TITLE-ABS-KEY(((cement OR clinker) AND (process OR plant OR produc* OR industr* OR manufact* OR mill OR factory OR making OR sector))
AND (decarbon* OR climate OR climate change OR global warming OR greenhouse gas OR (energy PRE/1 (efficiency OR consumption OR reduction
OR transition OR saving)) OR ((net zero OR zero OR negative) PRE/1 emissions) OR ((carbon OR carbon dioxide OR CO2 or CO 2 or CH4 or CH 4 or
N2O) W/2 (emission OR emissions OR reduction OR footprint OR capture))) AND SUBJAREA (ceng OR chem OR ener OR engi OR mate OR mult)
AND DOCTYPE (ar OR cp) AND LANGUAGE (english) AND PUBYEAR BEF 2022

5.3.2. Descriptive statistics of the sample

Table 4
Cement: Number of articles by publication source
Rank Publication source Number of articles

1 Construction and Building Materials 395 (7%)

2 Journal of Cleaner Production 390 (7%)
3 IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering 159 (3%)
4 Energy Procedia 135 (2%)
5 Materials 110 (2%)
6 Materials Today: Proceedings 84 (2%)
7 Sustainability (Switzerland) 79 (1%)
8 American Concrete Institute, ACI Special Publication 73 (1%)
9 Key Engineering Materials 67 (1%)
10 Energy 66 (1%)
Sum top 10 1558 (28%)

Table 5
Cement: Number of articles by country
Rank Country Number of articles

1 India 623 (11%)

2 China 619 (11%)
3 United States of America 502 (9%)
4 Germany 220 (4%)
5 United Kingdom 199 (4%)
6 Australia 172 (3%)
7 Canada 162 (3%)
8 Malaysia 159 (3%)
9 Spain 158 (3%)
10 Italy 149 (3%)
Sum top 10 2963 (53%)

12
 P. Tautorat et al.

Table 6
Cement: Most cited articles in the sample.
# First author Year Journal Title Number of
citations

1 Gartner, E. 2004 Cement and Concrete Research Industrially interesting approaches to "low-CO2" cements 1,194
2 Duxson, P. 2007 Cement and Concrete Research The role of inorganic polymer technology in the development of ’green concrete’ 1,091
3 Worrell, E., 2001 Annual Review of Energy and the Environment Carbon dioxide emissions from the global cement industry 847
4 McLellan, B. C. 2011 Journal of Cleaner Production Costs and carbon emissions for geopolymer pastes in comparison to ordinary portland cement 837
5 Meyer, C. 2009 Cement and Concrete Composites The greening of the concrete industry 810
6 Turner, L. K. 2013 Construction and Building Materials Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) emissions: A comparison between geopolymer and OPC cement 798

13
concrete
7 Liu, Z. 2015 Nature Reduced carbon emission estimates from fossil fuel combustion and cement production in China 785
8 Peters, W. 2007 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of An atmospheric perspective on North American carbon dioxide exchange: CarbonTracker 670
America
9 Huntzinger, D. 2009 Journal of Cleaner Production A life-cycle assessment of Portland cement manufacturing: comparing the traditional process with 663
N. alternative technologies
10 Damtoft, J. S. 2008 Cement and Concrete Research Sustainable development and climate change initiatives 662
Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055
P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

5.3.3. Topic modeling configuration and list of articles per topic

Fig. 11. Cement: Overview of most important tokens per topics.

5.3.4. Validation relevance and topic modeling

Table 7
Cement: Validation of relevance and topic modeling

# Topic name Articles least associated with the topic (stress test) Randomly drawn articles

Correctly included in sample Correctly allocated to topic Correctly included in sample Correctly allocated to topic

1 Waste heat recovery 3/5 1/3 4/5 2/4

2 Efficiency improvements 3/5 3/3 3/5 3/3
3 Grinding of raw materials 3/5 1/3 5/5 3/5
4 Process modeling for alternative fuels 5/5 4/5 4/5 3/4
5 CCS/CCU 4/5 4/4 4/5 4/4
6 Sequestration of CO2 2/5 2/2 3/5 3/3
7 CSA cements 5/5 5/5 5/5 4/5
8 Fly ash as alternative raw material 5/5 4/5 5/5 4/5
9 Cement mortars based on alt. raw materials 5/5 2/5 1/5 1/1
10 Alternative raw materials 5/5 5/5 5/5 5/5
11 Composites containing cement 4/5 4/4 4/5 4/4
12 Durability of cement types 5/5 5/5 4/5 4/4
13 Miscellaneous 4/5 4/4 1/5 1/1
14 Construction emissions 2/5 2/2 3/5 3/3
15 Reinforced concrete elements 4/5 4/4 4/5 4/4
16 Carbonation and hydration in concrete 3/5 2/3 4/5 2/4
17 Life cycle assessment 2/5 2/2 4/5 4/4
Sum 64/85 (75%) 54/64 (84%) 63/85 (74%) 54/63 (86%)

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P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

5.4. Steel production

5.4.1. Creation of data sample

Fig. 12. Steel: Stepwise reduction of literature corpus (Abbreviations: chem = Chemistry, ceng = Chemical Engineering, engi = Engineering, ener = Energy, mate =
Material Science, and mult = Multidisciplinary).
TITLE-ABS-KEY((ironmaking OR steelmaking OR ((iron OR steel) W/2 (process OR plant OR produc* OR industr* OR manufact* OR mill OR
factory OR making OR sector))) AND (decarbon* OR {climate} OR {climate change} OR {global warming} OR “greenhouse gas” OR (energy PRE/1
(efficiency OR consumption OR reduction OR transition OR saving)) OR ((“net zero” OR zero OR negative) PRE/1 emissions) OR ((carbon OR “carbon
dioxide” OR CO2 OR “CO 2′′ OR CH4 OR “CH 4′′ or N2O) W/2 (emission OR emissions OR reduction OR footprint OR capture)))) AND SUBJAREA
(ceng OR chem OR ener OR engi OR mate OR mult) AND DOCTYPE (ar OR cp) AND LANGUAGE (english) AND PUBYEAR BEF 2022

5.4.2. Descriptive statistics of the sample

Table 8
Steel: Number of articles by publication source
Rank Publication source Number of articles

1 ISIJ International 179 (5%)

2 Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (4%)
3 Energy 107 (3%)
4 AISTech - Iron and Steel Technology Conference Proceedings 95 (2%)
5 Applied Energy 85 (2%)
6 Energy Procedia 78 (2%)
7 Steel Research International 68 (2%)
8 Ironmaking and Steelmaking 64 (2%)
9 Advanced Materials Research 64 (2%)
10 SEAISI Quarterly (South East Asia Iron and Steel Institute) 63 (2%)
Sum top 10 975 (25%)

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P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

Table 9
Steel: Number of articles by country
Rank Country Number of articles

1 China 831 (21%)

2 Japan 351 (9%)
3 United States of America 322 (8%)
4 Germany 242 (6%)
5 India 201 (5%)
6 Sweden 161 (4%)
7 United Kingdom 150 (4%)
8 Italy 112 (3%)
9 Australia 108 (3%)
10 South Korea 94 (2%)
Sum top 10 2572 (65%)

Table 10
Steel: Most cited articles in the sample.

# First author Year Journal Title Number of citations

1 Wu, J. 2000 Science Phosphate depletion in the Western North Atlantic Ocean 602
2 Blain, S. 2007 Nature Effect of natural iron fertilization on carbon sequestration 557
in the Southern Ocean
3 Wolff, E. 2006 Nature Southern Ocean sea-ice extent, productivity and iron flux 406
over the past eight glacial cycles
4 Puxty, G. 2009 Environmental Science and Technology Carbon dioxide postcombustion capture: A novel screening study 405
of the carbon dioxide absorption performance of 76 amines
5 Hertwich, E. 2015 Proceedings of the National Academy of Integrated life-cycle assessment of electricity-supply scenarios 367
Sciences of the United States of America confirms global environmental benefit of low-carbon technologies
6 Zhang, H. 2013 Applied Energy A review of waste heat recovery technologies towards molten 290
slag in steel industry
7 Coale, K. H. 1996 Nature Control of community growth and export production by 287
upwelled iron in the equatorial Pacific Ocean
8 Ettwig, K. F. 2016 Proceedings of the National Academy of Archaea catalyze iron-dependent anaerobic oxidation of methane 284
Sciences of the United States of America
9 Nuss, P. 2014 PLoS ONE Life cycle assessment of metals: A scientific synthesis 281
10 Minx, J. 2011 Environmental Science and Technology A "carbonizing Dragon": China’s fast growing CO2 emissions revisited 263

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P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

5.4.3. Topic modeling configuration

Fig. 13. Steel: Overview of most important tokens per topics.

5.4.4. Validation relevance and topic modeling

Table 11
Steel: Validation of relevance and topic modeling

# Topic name Articles least associated with the topic (stress test) Randomly drawn articles

Correctly included in Correctly allocated to Correctly included in Correctly allocated to

sample topic sample topic

1 Waste heat recovery 2/5 1/2 3/5 2/3

2 Improvement of sintering process 3/5 0/3 2/5 1/2
3 Improvement of (re-)heating process & flash 4/5 3/4 3/5 3/3
ironmaking
4 Improvement of rolling process 1/5 1/1 1/5 1/1
5 Improvement via modeling 5/5 5/5 4/5 4/4
6 Recycling of blast furnace gas in the process 5/5 1/5 5/5 4/5
7 Improvement of reduction process 2/5 0/2 3/5 3/3
8 Improvement of efficiency in the steel industry 3/5 3/5 3/5 3/3
9 Improvement of EAF process 5/5 5/5 5/5 4/5
10 Carbon capture and storage/use 4/5 3/4 3/5 2/3
11 Carbonation of steel slag 2/5 0/2 3/5 1/3
12 Alternative reduction materials 5/5 4/5 4/5 2/4
13 Steel-reinforced concrete 1/5 0/1 1/5 1/1
14 Miscellaneous 0/5 0/0 0/5 0/0
15 Miscellaneous 2/5 2/2 1/5 1/1
16 Emissions of the steel industry 4/5 3/4 5/5 5/5
17 LCA of construction materials 3/5 3/3 5/5 4/5
Sum 51/85 (60%) 34/51 (67%) 51/85 (60%) 41/51 (80%)

5.5. Validation of decarbonization framework

The five decarbonization options indicated in the decarbonization framework (cf. Fig. 4) include all conceivable decarbonization options for the
industrial production system. The decarbonization framework was validated in a series of interviews with experts from different industry sectors.

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P. Tautorat et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 407 (2023) 137055

Fig. 14. Break-down of the five decarbonization options (categorization of heating technologies follows Madeddu et al. (2020)).

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