Chemical industry and environment: future challenges
Synthetic materials, drugs, fuels, detergents: the chemical industry has been the invisible driving force of modernity for over a century, yet it still enjoys a terrible reputation today, essentially due to the numerous environmental disasters caused around the world by the mismanagement of toxic or hazardous substances, such as the Seveso disaster of 1976 and the Bhopal disaster of 1984.
The chemical industry, however, is undergoing a momentous transformation : driven by ambitious regulations and increasingly conscious consumption, the industry is evolving rapidly. The challenge is being played out on multiple fronts: in the coming years, the chemical industry will be called upon to decarbonize energy-intensive processes, adopt renewable raw materials, and transform waste into resources. All without losing competitiveness.
Chemical industry and the environment: a story yet to be written
The language of chemistry , write Vincenzo Balzani and Margherita Venturi in “Chimica! Leggere e scrivere il libro della natura” (2012), is now so advanced that it borders on poetry, but it can (still) be used to write terrible literature. Such as that of the Seveso disaster, that of PFAS, that of CFCs and the toxic insecticides that we stopped using in the 1970s and which still contaminate the environment.
Over the past 50 years, we have produced and released more than 80 man-made chemicals into the environment, and not all of them were "good literature." Therefore, over the years, we have introduced laws and regulations such as the 1982 Seveso Directive, which imposed more stringent measures for factories producing hazardous chemicals, and REACH, in 2007, which requires manufacturers to test their substances for hazardousness before placing them on the market.
Then came EU Regulation 2021/1119 (or European Climate Law), which sets the goal of climate neutrality by 2050 by requiring a sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels. According to the EU's plans, we should reduce them by 55% by 2030 and 90% by 2040. For the chemical industry, this means abandoning fossil fuels and switching to the use of green hydrogen and renewable energy. But it also means inventing new materials and developing chemical processes to capture CO2 and convert it into useful chemical compounds.
The relationship between the chemical industry and the environment cannot be relegated to the disasters of the past. Today, in the words of Paul Anastas, the father of green chemistry , chemistry is " more effective, more efficient, and more elegant "—in a word, more advanced.
Sustainable Chemistry: Progress in the Sector
From 1990 to 2019, the Italian chemical industry reduced CO2 emissions by nearly 60%, anticipating the 2020 deadline, and halved its energy needs. Furthermore, as Federchimica notes, between 2005 and 2023, the sector reduced water consumption by 57%, while maintaining unchanged production. Between 1989 and 2023, nitrogen emissions into water decreased by 78%. Nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, which pollute the atmosphere, decreased by 95% and 99%, respectively.
Despite being responsible for approximately 14% of total manufacturing industry emissions, the chemical industry accounts for 22% of all investments in safety, health, and the environment. According to ISTAT data for 2016-2018, the chemical industry is the most effective in managing waste (including pollutants) and reducing atmospheric emissions.
In short, the chemical industry is a conscious industry, which over the years has been forced to improve under the combined pressure of production needs, regulations, reputation, and consumer demands. Examples of this include the numerous voluntary memberships in programs such as Responsible Care , which promotes sustainable development in the chemical industry, now adopted by over 10 companies in 60 countries worldwide (170 in Italy), or the increasingly frequent use of certifications that attest to product safety or sustainability, such as Ecolabel or Ecocert.
On the other hand, the enabling role of chemistry must always be considered: advanced insulators, batteries, and new materials contribute to innovation (and emissions reduction) in the most strategic sectors, from energy to construction.
The future of green chemistry: challenges and prospects
In this context, green chemistry is the fundamental strategy, the one that outlines the conceptual and practical framework within which to develop a "new chemistry" capable of guaranteeing safety, sustainability, and competitiveness: in a not-too-distant future, all chemistry will be "green."
Research could focus on new, cleaner and more efficient synthesis methods , for example, ones that completely eliminate solvents and hazardous substances, or on the search for new raw materials to replace fossil fuels, a need that has already given rise to numerous solutions for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and transforming it into polymers or fuels, closing the carbon cycle.
The future of green chemistry is also linked to the adoption of Artificial Intelligence , an evolution that will allow the design of safer molecules before they are even synthesized but which will require the sector to make significant efforts in terms of training, research and development.
In the coming years, the chemical industry will face crucial challenges. Fully decarbonizing the sector and transforming it into a circular economy requires completely overcoming its dependence on fossil fuels—a revolution that must occur through processes that are reasonably priced, ideally capable of competing with traditional ones. This is why research into advanced chemical recycling is so vibrant: knowing how to synthesize useful compounds from waste is essential to achieving a circular model.
In short, it's about finding alternative energy sources and raw materials, developing new production processes and products, all without losing market position. An epochal transformation that has already begun.
