Greener pathways for energy-intensive commodity chemicals: opportunities and challenges

• Available and emerging greener chemistry technologies are reviewed.
• Energy efficient process technologies can lead to large savings, but many require further development.
• Biomass and recovered CO2 feedstocks are promising, but less certain.
• Greater investments are needed to overcome technical and economic barriers.

The chemical industry is poised for significant growth and investment, which presents an opportunity for adoption of greener chemical technologies. This article reviews available and emerging technologies for reducing the fossil fuel demand associated with the ammonia, ethylene, methanol, propylene, and benzene, toluene, and xylenes (BTX) industries. These few energy-intensive commodity chemicals (EICCs) account for around half of the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the global chemical industry. Available data are harmonized to characterize potential energy use and GHG emissions savings, while technical and economic barriers to adoption are discussed. This information sheds light on the status of future technological options for reducing the impacts of the chemicals industry, and provides quantitative data to industry analysts and policy makers seeking a greater understanding of such options for EICCs.