Transitioning of the Chemical Industry Toward a Net‐Zero Carbon Dioxide Emission Path

TL;DR

This paper explores how the chemical industry can reduce its carbon emissions by replacing fossil fuels with renewable resources and processes.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that non-fossil pathways for key base chemicals are already available at scale.

Findings

Methanol can be produced from CO2 and renewable hydrogen.

Processes like methanol-to-olefins and methanol-to-aromatics can replace fossil-based methods.

Renewable energy is essential but currently represents half of global electricity production.

Abstract

Emissions from the chemical industry, both for energy and use of raw materials, account for approximately 6% of man‐made greenhouse gas emissions. In order to keep global warming at acceptable levels, these emissions—as all other emissions—have to be drastically reduced. One way to do this is the elimination of fossil feedstock from chemical production and meeting the energy demand from renewable resources. This contribution shows that the essential elements are already available at scale to provide C1‐building blocks, olefins, aromatics, and ammonia as the key base chemicals. Methanol can be produced from CO2 and renewable hydrogen, olefins from the methanol‐to‐olefins and related processes, for aromatics, the methanol‐to‐aromatics process is available, supplemented by biomass and recycled polymers as feedstock, and also for ammonia process concepts with a strongly reduced greenhouse gas footprint are available. Current hurdles are the partly unattractive economic boundary conditions and the rate at which a change in the feedstock situation can be achieved. Moreover, high amounts of renewable energy are required, which accounts for about half of the current global electricity production.

One way to reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of the chemical industry to almost zero would be the production of the platform molecules C1‐compounds, olefins, aromatics, and ammonia by non‐fossil pathways. The rest of the chemical production chains could be essentially left unchanged, provided the process energy input is renewable. The biggest challenges include sourcing the massive amounts of hydrogen needed and bringing the cost further down.

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