Industrial production is the backbone for economic output in almost all countries. Over the past decades, manufacturing industrial production has been growing in most economies. The industrial sector is dominated by the production of a few major energy-intensive commodities, such as steel, paper, cement, and chemicals. In any given country or region, production of these basic commodities follows the general development of the overall economy. Rapidly industrializing countries will have higher demands for infrastructure materials, and more mature markets will have declining or stable consumption levels. The regional differences in consumption patterns (expressed as consumption per capita) will fuel a further growth of consumption in developing countries. In addition to labor costs and costs for raw materials in these "heavy" industries, energy is a very important production cost factor in the effort to achieve higher energy efficiency (see Table 1). Markets in the industrialized countries show a shift toward...