IndustryPath
Multi-sector industrial decarbonization modeling framework.
Bottom-up, facility-level techno-economic simulation of global industrial transition. Developed and maintained by Subtext Systems. Named in the peer-reviewed 2026 Energy Policy paper on US steel decarbonization.
What IndustryPath does
Facility-level techno-economic simulation
Plant-by-plant capacity evolution, technology vintages, cost-based site selection, and competitive retirement dynamics across more than 1,600 industrial facilities and 137 countries. Annual resolution, 2022–2050.
Trade and policy transmission
Bilateral commodity flows and embodied emissions between regions. CBAM-style border adjustments, tariffs, subsidies, production credits (including hydrogen PTC and CCS incentives) propagating to facility-level deployment and retirement decisions.
Multi-sector framework
Multi-sector framework for heavy industry decarbonization pathways. Steel is the current implementation; cement, ammonia, refining, and uranium supply-chain modules are in development through funded collaborations.
What it's designed for
IndustryPath answers capacity-deployment, technology-mix, site-selection, and trade-exposure questions under explicit policy and market assumptions. It complements traditional energy system models (TIMES / MARKAL / IAM-class) by capturing facility-level spatial, logistical, and policy dynamics that sector-average or national-scale models do not resolve.
The framework is designed around explicit assumptions: it states what it optimizes, what it treats as exogenous, and where sensitivity matters. Scenarios are run deterministically; probabilistic exploration and Monte Carlo ensembles are handled through companion analysis on an engagement-by-engagement basis. Questions that require endogenous market-clearing, dynamic price discovery, or macro-scale equilibrium analysis sit outside IndustryPath's scope and are routed to specialist collaborators.
Published application
The first peer-reviewed publication to use IndustryPath (named) for facility-level industrial decarbonization analysis:
Li, F., Bataille, C., Stiebert, S., Jafari, S., Balyk, O., & Glynn, J. (2026). Technology and policy options for achieving net zero steel manufacturing in the United States. Energy Policy 211: 115124.
doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115124Commission a scope
IndustryPath is available for commissioned analyses in the steel sector and for co-developed sector-module extensions (cement, ammonia, refining, and adjacent heavy industry).