SCI’s latest SCItalk features Michael Carus, one of Europe's leading experts and advisors on building the renewable carbon economy.
To combat climate change we need to reduce our usage of fossil carbon in the form of oil, coal and gas.
While that’s possible (if difficult) when it comes to using fossil fuels for energy, this becomes much harder when it comes to the chemicals industry and creation of materials like plastics, which are mostly based on carbon. Replacing the carbon molecules used in chemicals and materials is not currently realistic and that means new non-fossil sources of carbon have to be found and developed in order to reduce demand for fossil carbon.
In 1994, together with five other scientists, Carus founded the private and independent nova-Institute for Ecology and Innovation. Today, the nova-Institute employs nearly 50 scientists from a wide range of disciplines, covering markets, technologies, sustainability, communication and policy.
The mission of the Nova Institute is to support companies on the smart transition to renewable carbon, mainly in the chemical and derived-materials industry including chemicals, polymer plastics but also detergents and body care products - the whole range which is coming through the chemical processing line, he says.
In this talk Carus explains that in the chemical sector: “We have embedded carbon, it can't be decarbonised it can be only de-fossilised and that means that we still work with carbon, but it's renewable carbon coming from biomass, CO2 utilisation and recycling.”
Under one scenario the sources of the carbon used by the chemicals industry could have switched entirely by a net-zero 2050 with 20% of its carbon coming from bio-based sources, 25% based on CO2 capture, 50% from recycling of bio-and CO2-based carbon and 5% recycling of fossil feedstocks.
SCI’s SCItalks are an ongoing series of online talks given by the most prominent and influential academics, thinkers and industry leaders who are working to translate scientific innovation into societal impact.
These free online science talks form part of an SCI’s charitable outreach which seeks to create public conversations about science-based topics in a way that is accessible to all. This is the first event of the three-part SCItalks series on sustainability.
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