Turning Challenge into Opportunity: Supplier Voices from Heavy-Emitting Sectors

To accelerate the decarbonization of heavy industry demands more than early market enthusiasm – it requires addressing the barriers that hinder suppliers from delivering low-carbon technologies and products at sufficient speed and scale. This report seeks to elevate the voices of the producers, project developers and innovators working within the hardest-to-abate heavy industrial sectors that underpin the world’s mobility and materials systems.
To accelerate the decarbonization of heavy industry demands more than early market enthusiasm – it requires addressing the barriers that hinder suppliers from delivering low-carbon technologies and products at sufficient speed and scale. This report seeks to elevate the voices of the producers, project developers and innovators working within the hardest-to-abate heavy industrial sectors that underpin the world’s mobility and materials systems.
The accounts of efforts to decarbonize are often told from the demand side – through buyers, regulators and financiers. Yet the pace and practicality of this transition ultimately hinge on those developing and supplying the low-carbon solutions themselves.
Drawing on extensive, structured interviews across the industries that comprise the First Movers Coalition (FMC) and its First Suppliers Hub (FSH) database of low-carbon products and services – aluminium, aviation, carbon dioxide removal (CDR), cement and concrete, shipping, steel and trucking – this report captures candid supplier perspectives that identify where progress is tangible, where market, technological and regulatory challenges persist, and how the path forward is viewed by many suppliers. The report connects on-the-ground experience with pragmatic solutions, offering insights valuable to producers, but equally relevant to offtakers, investors and policy-makers.
Further reading
All related content

Spain joins the First Movers Coalition – but what is it and what has it achieved so far?
Spain has become the 14th member of the First Mover’s Coalition (FMC), the World Economic Forum’s decarbonization initiative. Here's what you need to know.

How to raise the $30 trillion investment needed for 'hard-to-abate' sectors to reach net zero
To meet net zero emissions by 2050 across eight hard-to-abate sectors, a cumulative additional investment of nearly $30 trillion is required. This is how to achieve it.

How the First Movers Coalition is working to decarbonize the aluminium, steel and cement and concrete sectors
Discover how First Movers Coalition members are working to decarbonize the steel, aluminium, cement and concrete industries and creating a new global repository.