Journal Article

A US perspective on closing the carbon cycle to defossilize difficult-to-electrify segments of our economy

Jordahl, James L., Brown, Robert C., Vlachos, Dionisios G., Surendranath, Yogesh, Luca, Oana R., Tran, Ba, Sholl, David S., O’Brien, Casey P., Bowden, Mark E., Arenholz, Elke, Daniel, Claus, Heldebrant, David J., Rousseau, Roger, Miller, Daniel J., Boettcher, Shannon, Karakaya, Canan, Liu, Ping, Rana, Rachita, Walton, Krista S., Kian, Kourosh (Cyrus), Tassone, Christopher J., Chen, Jingguang G., Gagliardi, Laura, Tumas, William, Harper, Aaron S., Delferro, Massimiliano, Kidder, Michelle K., Lercher, Johannes, Toma, Francesca M., Male, Jonathan L., Schaidle, Joshua A., Yang, Jenny Y., Britt, Phillip F., Prozorov, Tanya, Morris, James R., Rallo, Robert, Lyubovsky, Maxim, Huang, Wenyu, Autrey, Tom, Palomino, Robert M., Malhotra, Deepika, Shaw, Wendy J., Efroymson, Rebecca A., Gaffney, Kelly J., Stevens, Michaela Burke, Rioux, Robert M., Dorhout, Peter K., Weber, Robert S., Biddinger, Elizabeth J., Qi, Long, Mueller, Karl T., Smith, Emily A., Tarpeh, William A., Helms, Brett A., Schulte, Lisa A., Bullock, R. Morris, Sadow, Aaron D., Sarazen, Michele L., Rodriguez, José A., Senanayake, Sanjaya D., Bare, Simo

2024

Overview

Electrification to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions is essential to mitigate climate change. However, a substantial portion of our manufacturing and transportation infrastructure will be difficult to electrify and/or will continue to use carbon as a key component, including areas in aviation, heavy-duty and marine transportation, and the chemical industry. In this Roadmap, we explore how multidisciplinary approaches will enable us to close the carbon cycle and create a circular economy by defossilizing these difficult-to-electrify areas and those that will continue to need carbon. We discuss two approaches for this: developing carbon alternatives and improving our ability to reuse carbon, enabled by separations. Furthermore, we posit that co-design and use-driven fundamental science are essential to reach aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets. To achieve net-zero carbon emissions, we must close the carbon cycle for industries that are difficult to electrify. Developing the needed science to provide carbon alternatives and non-fossil carbon will accelerate advances towards defossilization.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Springer Nature
• Subject: 09 BIOMASS FUELS / 639/4077/4057 / 639/4077/4079/4088/4058 / 639/638/675 / 704/172/169/896 / Analytical Chemistry / Biochemistry / Carbon / carbon alternatives / carbon capture and storage / Carbon cycle / carbon reuse / chemical hydrogen storage / Chemistry / Chemistry and Materials Science / Chemistry/Food Science / Co-design / Emissions / energy / ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY / Greenhouse gases / Inorganic Chemistry / INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY / Marine chemistry / Marine transportation / Organic Chemistry / Physical Chemistry / pollution remediation / Roadmap