Feedstocks, Funding, and the Future: What’s Holding Back Industrial Decarbonization

Industrial decarbonization in refineries, chemical plants, and cement kilns stalls primarily because of one missing measurement: product-level carbon intensity. Without a consistent, auditable way to calculate CO2-equivalent per unit of output, even advanced facilities cannot verify how sustainable their products are, according to insights shared by Lewis Sweet, Senior Director at Honeywell International.

This missing measurement explains why industrial decarbonization remains more complicated than swapping a feedstock or installing new automation. Without a consistent way to calculate CO₂-equivalent per unit of output, even the most advanced facilities can’t prove how sustainable their products really are.

What Is Carbon Intensity in Industry?

Carbon intensity is the measure of CO2-equivalent emissions embedded in each unit of industrial output, such as a liter of fuel or a ton of chemical. Unlike viscosity or calorific value, carbon intensity cannot be read by a sensor. It must be modeled from process data, energy inputs, and supply-chain footprints, making it both essential and difficult to standardize.

The result is an uneven playing field: one plant’s “low-carbon” product may not be comparable to another’s. As industries prepare for carbon pricing, emissions trading, and certification systems, the lack of a single, auditable metric will slow adoption and distort incentives.

Developing trustworthy carbon-intensity accounting, embedded directly into industrial automation and data systems, could give manufacturers the same precision they already apply to quality and yield.

Why Does Capital Block Decarbonization?

Capital, not technology, is the primary barrier to industrial decarbonization. Most large plants were designed for a 20-to-30-year life cycle built on fossil-fuel economics, and retrofitting them requires investors willing to accept new molecules, new markets, and shifting policy frameworks before the payback math can close.

In the fossil era, energy systems changed once in a generation. Today, technology lifecycles are shorter, regulations move faster, and market signals shift overnight. That volatility makes it difficult to model returns or de-risk infrastructure. As a result, many decarbonization projects stall not for technical reasons but because the payback math doesn’t close.

Digital twins and lifecycle modeling tools are starting to change that equation. By simulating performance, cost, and emissions outcomes under multiple future scenarios, they can reveal how a retrofit or new process performs over its entire lifetime — a crucial step toward unlocking financing at scale.

Why Are Renewable Feedstocks Unstable?

Switching to bio-based or waste-derived feedstocks introduces supply fragility that petroleum-based operations do not face. Materials such as tallow, used cooking oil, and rapeseed depend on agricultural cycles and localized waste-collection networks that fluctuate seasonally, meaning the business case for a renewable plant can collapse if that supply dries up.

If that material dries up, the entire business case can collapse. Unlike crude oil, which flows from a stable global market, renewable feedstocks are fragmented and highly localized. Operators must now monitor not only process conditions but also the availability, price, and carbon profile of every incoming shipment.

Integrating supply-chain analytics into plant operations — predicting feedstock availability, quality, and sustainability in real time — is becoming as important as monitoring temperature or pressure.

How Do Legacy Plants Outperform New Ones?

Mature heavy-industry facilities achieve an energy efficiency advantage that newer clean-tech sectors have not yet matched. In mature refining operations, a single unit of thermal energy can be reused up to seven times through heat recovery and process integration, while newer industries such as data centers or battery manufacturing typically use that same energy only once or twice before it is lost.

Closing that gap represents one of the fastest ways to cut industrial emissions without waiting for breakthrough technologies. As IIoT systems and automation create shared data environments, practices developed in high-efficiency process plants can now inform design decisions in younger, energy-intensive sectors.

What Will Decide the Decarbonization Race?

The decarbonization race will be decided by measurement quality, not ambition level. Progress depends on knowing exactly how much carbon is embedded in each unit of output, how stable the feedstock supply is, and how long the investment will hold its value. When industry measures carbon with the same rigor it applies to throughput and yield, sustainability becomes an operational discipline.

When industry can measure carbon with the same rigor it measures throughput and efficiency, sustainability becomes an operational discipline, not a declaration.

This article was developed from an interview with Lewis Sweet, General Manager for Sustainable Fuels & Chemicals / Sr. Director, Integrated Climate Solutions at Honeywell International Inc., recorded during Honeywell User Group 2025 in The Hague, Netherlands. The trip was supported by Honeywell. 

About the author

Lucian Fogoros is the Co-founder of IIoT World.