Industrial decarbonization requires coordinated changes across technologies, supply chains, infrastructure, markets, and policy. These changes occur at multiple scales, from process and facility operations to regional deployment, sector-wide transitions, and economy-wide material and energy flows. Our group evaluates industrial decarbonization strategies across these scales to identify pathways and strategies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while remaining technically feasible, economically viable, and environmentally robust under different industrial, regional, and policy contexts.
Research Themes
Process-scale technology assessment
At the process scale, we combine engineering process modeling, life cycle assessment, techno-economic analysis, and systems approaches to evaluate emerging and existing industrial technologies. These analyses examine how feedstocks, energy inputs, process configurations, facility operations, and carbon-management options affect emissions, costs, and resource use. We focus on understanding technology and environmental performance, identifying key design trade-offs for emerging options such as hydrogen, waste conversion, and carbon capture and storage across industries including refining, pulp and paper, and chemicals.
Supply-chain and sector-scale transition analysis
We use bottom-up and top-down approaches, supply-chain modeling, material flow analysis, and sectoral assessment to evaluate how technologies perform when embedded in broader industrial systems. These analyses consider production routes, energy and material flows, infrastructure needs, demand growth, recycling opportunities, and interactions among producers, users, and markets. At this scale, our research supports sector-wide analysis of decarbonization pathways across chemicals, materials, aviation, renewable energy supply chains, and the critical materials that underpin clean-energy transitions.
Regional, national, and economy-wide deployment pathways
We couple industrial ecology methods with integrated assessment modeling and scenario analysis to evaluate the large-scale impacts of alternative technology deployment pathways. Our research examines where and when technologies can be deployed, how supply and demand can be aligned, and how industrial transitions interact with energy systems, transportation, waste management, land use, and material supply. Our work supports strategic planning for hydrogen, low-carbon fuels, carbon management, clean-energy materials, and other industrial transition pathways under changing policy, infrastructure, and market conditions.
Data, uncertainty, and decision support
Across all scales, credible industrial decarbonization depends on transparent data, consistent system boundaries, and robust treatment of uncertainty. Our group examines how data quality, model structure, uncertainty, and scenario assumptions affect emissions estimates, technology comparisons, policy design, and investment decisions.
Selected Related Publications
Xu, Y., Peng, W., and Yao, Y. (2025). Supply-demand strategies for near-term climate benefits from hydrogen in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(41), e2519606122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2519606122
Yang, F. and Yao, Y. (2025). Sustainable aviation fuel pathways: Emissions, costs and uncertainty. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 215, 108124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2025.108124
Yao, Y., Lan, K., Graedel, T.E., and Rao, N.D. (2024). Models for decarbonization in the chemical industry. Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 15(1), 139–161. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-chembioeng-100522-114115
Yao, Y. (2024). Mitigating uncertainties enables more accurate greenhouse gas accounting for petrochemicals. Nature Chemical Engineering, 1(4), 273–274. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44286-024-00048-y
Lee, T., Yao, Y., Graedel, T.E., and Miatto, A. (2024). Critical material requirements and recycling opportunities for US wind and solar power generation. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 28(3), 527–541. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13479
Lan, K., Cruz, D., Li, J., Boakye, A.A., Park, H., Tiller, P., Mittal, A., Johnson, D.K., Park, S., and Yao, Y. (2024). Life-cycle assessment of sustainable aviation fuel derived from paper sludge. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 12(22), 8379–8390. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.4c00795
Wu, N., Lan, K., and Yao, Y. (2023). An integrated techno-economic and environmental assessment for carbon capture in hydrogen production by biomass gasification. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 188, 106693. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106693
Lan, K. and Yao, Y. (2022). Feasibility of gasifying mixed plastic waste for hydrogen production and carbon capture and storage. Communications Earth & Environment, 3, 300. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00632-1