Defossilising fuels and chemicals – a systemic analysis from feedstock and technology, to hurdles and enablers

Abstract

Climate change will force society to abandon the fossil feedstocks, which have been invaluable for energy, fuels and chemicals, and will force it to switch to renewable feedstocks. Much of the defossilisation will be achieved by switching to renewable electricity, but heavy-duty fuels and chemicals will resist electrification. They will largely switch to renewable carbon instead. This paper presents a systemic perspective on the carbon transition. It will review the applications that will still rely on renewable carbon, estimate the size of the carbon demand by 2100 and discuss the renewable carbon sources in terms of availability, acceptability and affordability. The paper will then discuss the technologies that are available for valorising these resources. Systemic hurdles to deployments will then be considered, e.g., political/public resistance, costs, pain of technology maturation and infrastructure lock-in. Finally, the paper will discuss a few systemic enablers, e.g., the value of local resources and existing infrastructure, the adjustment of product portfolio to the new feedstocks, approaches to gain public acceptance and the need to revisit our economic model.