DEFOSSILISING THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY – ROYAL SOCIETY POLICY BRIEFING

Chemicals are, of course, essential to our everyday lives – they are in the toiletries we use, the pharmaceuticals that ensure healthier lives, as as well as being in products such as plastics, paints and fertilisers.

The majority of chemicals are made using fossil feedstocks – namely oil, natural gas and coal. These feedstocks are then transformed into intermediate chemicals and then into the downstream consumer products used by all of us.

In the context of most industries, decarbonisation essentially refers to reducing emissions through measures such as electrification and improved efficiency of energy-intensive emissions.

However, given the nature of its feedstock’s, the chemical sector cannot fully decarbonise in the same way, as it requires carbon as an essential element to produce its products. This Royal Society briefing considers the role of defossilisation – which is the replacement of fossil-derived feedstocks with alternative sources of carbon whose production will result in much lower Green House Gas emissions. Read more