The electrification of utility systems in energy-intensive plants is a promising measure for decarbonising the chemical industry in the short term. However, with the increasing deployment of renewable energy sources, the variability of electricity prices will become a challenge for plants with continuous and constant energy demand. It is thus uncertain whether electrification can become financially viable. This work models the electrification of utility systems in combination with storage technologies for five chemical plants with existing fossil fuel-based utility generation and uses historical data as energy price scenarios. The results show that partial electrification is cost-effective when using electricity is cheaper than natural gas for more than 600 h. Regarding the portfolio of technologies, electric boilers are installed first, followed by thermal energy storage and batteries. Hydrogen is not cost-effective in any of the scenarios explored. This is independent of the type of plant, the available grid connection capacity, and the minimal load of existing fossil fuel-based utility generation. This work thus highlights the potential for electrifying industrial utility systems and the role that electric boilers and energy storage units can play in electrification.

Electrifying the utility supply of existing petrochemical processes is a potential measure for CO₂ emission reduction in the chemical industry. With an increasing share of variable renewable energy sources in the electricity grid, electricity price fluctuations will become more frequent. However, most existing petrochemical processes operate continuously and, therefore, require a constant supply of utilities. In this paper, we model an electrified utility system that includes different types of storage units to explore how a constant utility demand could be supplied under fluctuating electricity prices. To achieve this, we model a utility system that provides electricity and heat to an olefins plant in the Port of Rotterdam and use mathematical optimisation to capture optimal hourly operations of the plant under fluctuating prices. We find that the cost-optimal utility system consists of electric boilers, integrated thermal energy storage, and technologies for storing and using hydrogen produced on-site. With data for prices of the Dutch electricity grid in 2022, the electrified utility system results in higher costs than a fossil-based system. Increasing price fluctuation levels would lead to lower operational costs as the system's flexibility enables shifting the electricity consumption to the hours with the lowest electricity prices.

Electrification of processes and utilities is considered a promising option towards the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the chemical industry. Therefore, electricity demand is expected to increase steeply. Since the sources of future low-carbon electricity are variable in nature, there is a need for strategies to match availability and demand. Literature identified the flexibility of chemical processes as one promising strategy to address variability. This study aims to provide insights into how stakeholders from the power sector and the chemical industry consider flexibility in chemical processes and to identify key benefits and bottlenecks. For this article, we combined a review of peer-reviewed and grey literature with stakeholder interviews to map and describe the state of the art of flexible chemicals production, and to identify requirements for further research. The main drivers to investigate the flexibility potential are first, the contribution to energy system reliability, and second, potential cost savings for the industry. Main limitations are considered to be first, the uncertain economic performance of flexible processes due to investment costs, reduced production and uncertain revenues from flexible operation, and second, the complexity of the implementation of flexibility.