Within several decades, manufacturing facilities will need to achieve net-zero energy status in order to achieve climate and energy goals that are being discussed by the scientific and legislative community. Successfully overcoming the associated technical, economic, and policy challenges requires that potential paths to achieving net-zero energy manufacturing (NZEM) and their costs be conceptualized and discussed now. Despite the critical importance, relative immediacy, and difficulty of achieving NZEM, there has been little direct discussion or pursuit of how to achieve this end.

In this paper, definitions of NZEM will be discussed along with related terms. Next, several small light-manufacturing facilities that have or are attempting to achieve net-zero energy use, and the technologies and strategies these facilities used will be briefly reviewed. Then, a methodology for examining industrial processes for NZEM will be proposed. Finally, this paper will discuss potential paths and corresponding project economics towards net-zero manufacturing for several anonymous but real manufacturing processes. Concepts from the literature such as lean energy and theoretical minimum energy use will be involved. Additionally, this paper will discuss technological and financial challenges for each example process. For each case, approximate implementation costs and savings will be discussed.