What does moving an oil-fired rotary furnace to induction do to a foundry's CO2?
Less than the fuel saved suggests, because the power moves to the grid. The report for the Batala, Jalandhar and Ludhiana foundry cluster shows a 66.97 tonne CO2 cut a year, with 458 MWh of electricity used in the proposed case. Downtime is about 3 weeks.
The report's baseline
- Oil-fired rotary furnace: 515 litres a day, 3.43 tonnes of raw material a day, 3.2 tonnes of output a day, 800 tonnes a year.
- Proposed induction furnace: 1,830 kWh a day, 458 MWh a year, raw material 3.328 tonnes a day.
- Rejection falls from 7% to 4% in the report's assumption.
Why the CO2 cut is smaller than the oil saved
Burning oil is Scope 1. Electricity is Scope 2. A furnace oil litre carries a large factor and a kWh a small one, but the induction furnace uses a lot of kWh. The net effect is what the report shows, and it moves with the grid factor of the year.
One thing to check in the report
Its summary table prints the oil use as 128,750 tonnes, and elsewhere as kilograms. 128,750 divided by 515 litres a day is 250 days, so the figure is litres. Use litres from your own bills.
Downtime
The summary table says about 3 weeks of process downtime; the text says 2 to 3.
Worked CO2 from the report's numbers, with Senseible's factors
- Oil: 515 litres x 250 days = 128,750 litres. At 2.97 kg CO2 per litre: 382.4 t CO2 a year.
- Electricity: 1,830 kWh x 250 days = 457,500 kWh. At 0.675 kg per kWh: 308.8 t CO2 a year.
- Net cut: 382.4 minus 308.8 = 73.6 t CO2 a year.
- The report shows 66.97 t, using its own factors.
The 250 days is implied by the report's own numbers. The report dates from 2011.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads furnace oil and electricity bills into Scope 1 and Scope 2 records per site, so the before and after of a furnace change comes from your own invoices.
Last reviewed 2026-11-03.