Looks like the translation is "sector coupling" or "integrated energy", but I think the real key in translating this is that we typically use a different framing in English.

German "Sektorenkopplung": We're explicitly unifying all sectors to a single source of energy, and it's implicit that this source is electricity.

English "electrification": We're explicitly switching sectors to electricity, and it's implicit that this will ultimately tie every sector to a single source of energy.

Disclaimer: I don't speak German.

The English-language podcasts I listen to have dubbed it the "electrify everything" movement.

To be honest, English most often sounds way cooler than German.

I could be wrong, but I thought the point of the GP comment was that there are many industrial processes like smelting that don't have good electric replacements. For example, it's nigh-impossible to maintain the temperatures required to run a steel plant with no combustion and only resistive heating elements.

They all have good replacements, but if their competitor is allowed to pollute without paying for externalities, they'll struggle in the market.

The EU had, as pointless as it was, anti dumping tariffs on solar modules. Such tariffs can be used to protect domestic non-poluters against their foreign competition.

They've been talking about exactly that for a while but recent events seen to have nudged it along:

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/3/15/eu-countries-ba...

One major category of such processes is calcination, both for cement (CaCO3 >> CaO) and alumina (Al(OH)3 >> Al2O3). This can be done with concentrated solar heating:

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2017/gc/c7gc0058...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X1...

But building enough plants to actually do this at scale could take a while. Supposedly there was an anode developed for electrolytic iron reduction:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12134

but there have been problems with scaling it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349905

Between calcination, smelting and heating, you've addressed a pretty big chunk of fuel-burning processes. The question is whether we can get these kinds of technologies online in time without Manhattan-Project levels of government support, since that does not seem to be forthcoming.

Calcination can also use low-duty-cycle electric kilns that soak up spare solar panel electricity (from overprovisioning), at least once you have 2-3 days of storage to level solar fluctuations and day/night (big, cheap ovens take a while to heat up).

In general, they are quite amenable to using electrically heated air in place of methane/air combustion exhaust.

Arc blast furnaces are a thing - just more expensive. The electrode (typically graphite) is consumed, so technically not zero carbon, but the gas could be captured.

There are steelmaking processes using hydrogen for reducing the ore and arc furnaces for heat. They are currently a bit more expensive than using coke.

For those, one would use H2 or methane created with the use of electricity.