RCI’s scientific background report: “Renewable carbon as a guiding principle for sustainable carbon cycles (Update)” (September 2023)

Why It Is Right and Necessary To Choose Renewable Carbon as a Guiding Principle for Sustainable Development in the Chemicals and Materials Sectors

The Scientific Background Report on “Renewable Carbon as a Guiding Principle for Sustainable Carbon Cycles – Why It Is Right and Necessary To Choose Renewable Carbon as a Guiding Principle for Sustainable Development in the Chemicals and Materials Sectors“ was RCI’s first major publication and forms the basis for the concept and strategy of the RCI. Together with input from all members, the RCI has worked on an updated version – In this second edition, the following main changes have been implemented:

• New IPCC data on greenhouse gas emissions from the 6^th Assessment Report (published March 2022) have been integrated.
• To establish proper data baselines, entirely novel carbon flows data have been integrated.
• The initial eleven policy recommendations were further sharpened, fine-tuned and concretised through lots of feedback from talks with politicians, NGOs, industrial actors, the bio-based, CO₂-based and recycling sector, energy experts and many other stakeholders. Further political demands resulted from these discussions as well as recently published RCI position papers and consultations, which are now also integrated into the paper.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change, the inflow of fossil carbon must be reduced quickly and in high volumes. The EU has started pushing for decarbonisation in energy and transport sectors, but has largely ignored chemical and material industries. These sectors require carbon-based feedstocks and cannot be “decarbonised,” so tackling embedded carbon in these industries is crucial. This paper proposes an approach to minimize environmental impact and maximize the reduction of GHG emissions.

DOI No.: https://doi.org/10.52548/CXFS7519

Authors

Renewable Carbon Initiative

Date of publication

Sep 2023

Pages

51

Language

File type

PDF

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773