Fossil future trends

FIGURE 23.5 Schematic reconstruction of mean global surface temperature through the last 100 million years, based on analyses of various marine and terrestrial deposits. Predictions of future trends represent an assumption of substantial utilization of the fossil fuel reservoir. [Modified from Crowley (1990) and presented by Crowley (1996).]... 

The previous section highlighted the efforts in the area of catalysis carried out up to 1990. The aim was to show how different research ideas in this field originated and evolved in order to better understand the more recent developments and chart some possible future trends. Since 1990 there has been an explosion of research and development activity for all three types of fuel cells, amidst concerns regarding the use of fossil fuels from the perspectives of both climate change and nonrenewable resource depletion. 

Despite the condensed format of this overview, I hope that it manages to convince readers that the interest in monomers from renewable resources is not a passing whim of some polymer chemists led astray by fashionable trends, but, instead, a very sound strategy that should help to shape the future of polymer science and technology. Although obviously not all these studies will reach viable practical realizations in terms of novel macromolecular materials, it is indispensable to build a rich database in preparation for the progressive dwindling of fossil... 

Current energy-use projections suggest a continued reliance on fossil fuels and assume little or no penetration of hydrogen options. But because these forecasts are often just based on current trends, they also are inevitably wrong. They fail to consider as yet undiscovered technologies or the effects of possible future geopolitical events, such as a... 

With current trends towards reducing dependency on fossil raw materials, it is expected that the use of such high purity lignins as sustainable raw materials will increase in the near future, perhaps expanding to other applications beyond the PF domain [71],... 

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