Industrial and Energy Terminology: Definitions

Industrial and Energy Terminology

Industrial Activities and Processes

• Industrial Activity: An activity that transforms commodities into manufactured products.
• Extractive Activities: Activities responsible for obtaining natural resources from the Earth.
• Agribusiness: A factory that converts agricultural raw materials into semi-processed or processed products.
• Industry: An activity that transforms raw materials into semi-processed or processed products using an energy source.
• Agrifood Industry: An industry transforming products from agriculture, livestock, and fisheries.
• Equipment Industry: Industries engaged in producing machinery and apparatus necessary for the production of goods and services.
• Industry Tip: High-tech sectors that are skilled and capital-intensive, requiring advanced production techniques and investment in R&D.

Industrialization and Regional Development

• Endogenous Industrialization: An industrial policy that aims to encourage industry in an area with its own natural and human resources.
• Induced Industrialization: Regions where concentrated investments, employment, and output remain incapable of relating to other industrial sites.
• Technology Park: Land on which companies are focused on tech sectors.
• Industrial Area: An area of land destined, through urban planning, for the installation of industrial facilities.
• Industrial Restructuring: The adjustment of a production system to market demands at competitive terms.
• Industrial Region: A large area that has led to the accumulation of all types of industrial activities located in scattered towns.
• Reindustrialization: An industrial policy applied to the areas most adversely affected by industrial restructuring.
• ZUR (Urgent Reindustrialization Areas): Areas created to encourage reindustrialization in regions most affected by the conversion, and may seek to change corporate tax and financial incentives.

Energy Sources and Types

• Biomass: Biological mass or the amount of living matter produced in a particular area of the Earth's surface or by specific agencies.
• Green Biomass: Renewable biomass grown for energy, producing environmental benefits such as soil conservation and biodiversity protection.
• Thermal Power Plant: A manufacturing plant dedicated to the production of electricity by combustion.
• Geothermal Energy: Energy that can be obtained by the use of heat inside the Earth.
• Nuclear Energy: Energy from the fusion of atomic uranium in nuclear power plants.
• Solar Energy: Energy obtained directly from the Sun.
• Photovoltaics: Technology that directly converts energy from sunlight into electricity.
• Energy Sources: Natural resources from which useful energy can be obtained for various applications.
• Non-renewable Energy Sources: Energy sources that do not continually regenerate, so they are exhaustible.

Raw Materials

• Raw Material: Material of plant, animal, or mineral origin obtained directly from nature that becomes the property of industry.