A Vision and Roadmap for Sustainability Through Chemistry

Many barriers exist to limit the implementation of radical improvements to industrial performance incremental debottlenecking of plant and expansion is preferred in times of slow growth and a first-of-a-ldnd process faces a high investment hurdle. The economic and regulatory environment needs to support investment in new technologies that demonstrates sustainable advantage but carry also higher technical risk than conventional operations. 

While the SRA document was structured along the three sections indicated above, the lAP document was instead organized along eight areas (bio-based economy. 

The lAP also contains an introduction to three visionary projects that will practically demonstrate the benefits and impact on daily life of the sustainable industrial chemistry (i) the Smart Energy Home, (ii) the Integrated Biorefinery, and (iii) the F Factory the latter has already been discussed in this chapter. 

For conciseness, it is not possible to discuss in depth all the research themes and priorities identified, and the issues that need to be addressed in the short-, medium- and long-term to realize the full potential of research and innovation. 

We thus outline here only the general aspects, with references given to cited documents for details. 

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The final section of this chapter has been dedicated to a concise discussion of a vision and roadmap for sustainability through chemistry, taken from the implementation action plan prepared by the European Technology Platform on Sustainable Chemistry. This plan evidences the pervasive role of chemistry for our society and thus how a next step is necessary in R D to really realize a sustainable world through chemistry innovation. 

This book originates from these considerations, which are shared by the great effort made in the last 3-4 years by the chemical industry in Europe to define a new vision and roadmap for industrial chemistry through the discussion made vfithin the European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry (www.suschem.org) sponsored by CEEIC (European Eederation of Chemical Industry) and EuropaBio (European Association of Biotechnology). 

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