Beschreibung:
This report compares estimated production costs from four energy-intensive industries (steel, cement, chemical and non-ferrous metals) in the European Union and some third countries. Production costs have been estimated following a bottom-up approach, i.e. using information at facility level from a representative number of facilities. Costs are broken down to key factors, such as material, labour and energy costs and exclude capital costs (depreciation and interest). Moreover, the energy costs are estimated considering the effect of the state of technologies and the fuel mix in each country. For the iron and steel industry the production costs of hot-rolled coil and wire rod are analysed as representative flat and long products, respectively. The production costs of these products have been estimated for both the integrated route (blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace) and the recycling route (electrical arc furnace). For the chemical industry, the products analysed are ammonia, methanol, ethylene and propylene; whereas for the non-ferrous metals the analysis is focused on primary aluminium production, copper cathodes and slabs of zinc. Most of the EU28 production costs are ranked (when compared with certain competitor countries) between the 75th percentile and the maximum production cost. These costs are highest in the EU relative to other countries or regions in the case of flat products from the recycling route, ammonia and methanol. For long products -from the recycling route-, flat products -from the integrated route-, ethylene, propylene -refinery grade- and copper anode the EU28 production costs are between the median (the median separates the higher half of the costs from the lower half) and the 75th percentile of all production costs estimated. In the case of cement, the EU28 production cost is quite similar to the value of the median cost. There are also cases in which the EU28 production costs were among the lowest costs, namely for copper cathode and zinc slabs. It is worth noting that the contribution of energy costs to production costs is the highest in the EU only for methanol and ammonia. For all other products and industries analysed (including methanol and ammonia), other components of the cost (raw materials, labour and others or feedstock) contribute more to final costs than energy (natural gas is considered as a feedstock for methanol and ammonia). It is also noteworthy that, in most industries and products, the behaviour of credits (by-products, home scrap, electricity production from waste gases or from combined heat and power) contributes to reduce production costs more in the EU than it does in other countries or regions.