Navigating tools to develop sustainable chemicals and materials

Abstract
The chemical industry faces major challenges in achieving sustainability goals like carbon neutrality. A wide range of emerging alternatives is being explored to reduce the environmental footprint, such as replacing fossil feedstock with renewable carbon feedstock (biomass, recycled plastics, or CO2), alternative energy sources for chemical processes, and applying circular economy strategies.

Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely accepted method for quantifying the environmental impacts of a product or technology and can be used to support scientists, governments, and companies to select the most promising alternatives to achieve sustainability goals.

Delivering insightful results, however, requires overcoming obstacles such as low levels of technology readiness, dependence on other parts of the value chain, oversimplified models that do not reflect reality, and increased complexity brought on by circularity approaches. Sustainability also has social and economic objectives that must be taken into account for decision-making, adding to the complexity. Therefore, this lecture will explore and evaluate the tools for navigating the journey toward sustainable chemistry.