C H A P T E R

1
The vision of future sustainable energy,
catalyst, and chemistry: opportunities for
innovation and business
Angelo Basilea, Gabriele Centib,*, Marcello De Falcoc,
Gaetano Iaquaniellod,e
a
ITM-CNR, c/o University of Calabria, Rende, Cosenza, Italy; bDepartment of MIFT - Industrial
Chemistry, ERIC aisbl and INSTM/CASPE, University of Messina, Messina, Italy; cResearch Unit
Process Engineering, University of Rome “Campus Bio-Medico”, Rome, Italy; dKT e Kinetics Technology
S.p.A., Rome, Italy; eNextChem srl, L’Aquila, Italy
* Corresponding author. e-mail address: centi@unime.it

1. Introduction minimizing waste by reuse, is not just the intro-

The evidences that the current chemical and
energy production system is facing a major tran-
sition in its structure, in terms of both raw mate-
rials and energy sources, technologies of
conversion, and market drivers, are continu-
ously increasing [1e12]. The characteristic
elements of this transition will be the progressive
replacement of fossil fuels with the combination
of renewable energy (RE) and alternative carbon
feeds. This will be a major change in the
manufacturing system that will require a radical
change of the modalities of production, and thus
related technologies, but also system thinking.
For example, circularity is the keyword for the
next decade. However, a circular economy or
circularity, i.e., an economic system aimed at
duction of technologies using waste streams, but
it asks for system rethinking [13]. Realizing a
circular economy requires a radical and systemic
innovation. Most of the actual business
modeling tools and methods do not have the
necessary comprehensive approach for an inno-
vative business approach to the circular econ-
omy. Replacing products designed to be
disposed (one-way use) with those that are
designed for circularity means to create a reverse
logistics network acting as support for the circu-
lar economy. The advantages derived from this
innovative approach to a circular economy are
many, such as an increased rate of technologic
development, realization of materials with
enhanced properties, increased labor and energy
efficiency, and the creation of profit

Catalysis, Green Chemistry and Sustainable Energy

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-64337-7.00001-X 7 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
8 1. The vision of future sustainable energy, catalyst, and chemistry: opportunities for innovation
opportunities for companies. McKinsey, a
worldwide consulting and management com-
pany, reported that by introducing circularity
principles in the area of manufacturing, Europe
can create a net value of V1.8 trillion by 2030,
i.e., about doubling the net value expected
from the current linear development path [13].
In general, this transition and effort toward
sustainability offers great possibilities for inno-
vation and business, creating great opportunities
for industrial renewal, regeneration, and innova-
tion, as well with small-medium enterprises
(SMEs) and spin-off/startup companies that
may especially take advantage of the new oppor-
tunities due to their quick adaption to a chang-
ing word [14,15].
Catalysis, green chemistry, and sustainable
energy are the three key elements of this transi-
tion and the three charactering areas where
new technologies will create novel business op-
portunities. This book is thus dedicated to these
aspects and aims to offer ideas and case exam-
ples, together with some technologic, economic,
and entrepreneurial background to stimulate
new possibilities for entrepreneurs wanting to
address the current global transition period to
adopt low carbon and sustainable energy/chem-
istry production, but also to create new business.
It thus aims to offer an integrated view of new
likelihoods within catalysis and green chemistry
in this changing economic context, showing how
these potential new technologies may become
useful to business. Fundamentals and specific
examples are included to guide the transforma-
tion of idea to innovation and business.
This book originates from the Summer School
held in Sarteano (SI), Italy, on July 22e27, 2019,
and it is dedicated to stimulating young and
senior scientists, engineers, and managers to
explore in a creative way these emerging oppor-
tunities. The school, and this book as well, inte-
grate different views of scientists from
academic research and engineers or managers
from industries that share their knowledge and
expertise, elements of thought, examples, and
I. Introduction
case histories regarding how to develop a path
from idea generation and testing to preparation
of research or industrial projects, fund raising,
business plan preparation, and starting a
startup/spin-off, IPR (intellectual property
right) preparation, and finally, creation of com-
mercial processes or products.
This introductory chapter provides general
elements and aspects about these topics and, in
general, sustainability as a driver for innovation
and business, while Chapter 2 introduces key
aspects of how green chemistry will change
chemical engineering and vice versa. The
following chapters will discuss specific aspects,
centered on four main areas:
- opportunities for innovation and business
- methodologies for green chemistry and
engineering
- laboratory from industrial practice: examples
and case histories
- creating business with new technologies
2. Sustainability as a driver for company
strategies
Increasingly, companies, as well as financial
capital promoters, are no longer considering
sustainability as a way to comply with regula-
tions due to social pressure but as a corporate
strategy for joint protection of resources and an
environment for market and social requirements
(in terms of products and social visibility of the
companies itself) and, more recently, as an
approach to stimulate innovation and competi-
tiveness. Forward-looking venture capital com-
panies and investment funds are stimulating in
spin-off/startup companies the need to evolve
from a service approach (too much dependent
on the economic situation) to an innovation
vision, which results in the creation of new
strong business cases. An example is the Avan-
tium companies, initially started as a service
company of Shell and then stimulated to create
 2. Sustainability as a driver for company strategies
new business cases in the area of biomass trans-
formation. NextChem, the new business unit of
the Maire Tecnimont, is another example of a
green acceleration company created to explore
new possibilities derived from (i) carbon foot-
print reduction, (ii) circular economy, and (iii)
new bio-based products and feedstock.
Two decades ago, sustainability in the chemi-
cal industry was limited to actions necessary to
protect employees health and safety and to meet
environmental regulations. However, following
the white paper on The United Nations’ Sustain-
able Development Goals (published in 2015) and
its adoption by several national governments,
sustainability targets have been strongly
enforced. Today, sustainability-related invest-
ments are about a fifth of management assets,
especially in the chemical industry where sustain-
ability is not a compliance issue but an opportu-
nity to generate revenues.
Table 1.1 shows examples of how sustainabil-
ity megatrends create opportunities that trans-
late to business prospects, when approached
with the correct open-minded vision, because
the opportunities also create risks. This is what
currently occurs in the area of sustainable
energy. RE is becoming the better solution from
both environmental and economic perspectives,
with over 80% of the world’s new energy capac-
ities dedicated to this area, but with still many
companies, which have not addressed technol-
ogy in time of transition, trying instead to insist
that fossil fuels are the only solution.
In this sense, there is also wide debate
whether a transition from oil or carbon to natural
gas is still worthy to consider, when REs in com-
bination with solar fuels (as a solution to trans-
porting and storing renewable energy) are
already a preferable solution. From a practical
perspective, with energy being the crucial
element of our actual system with thus a transi-
tion requiring long times to be completed, fossil
fuels will be still a backbone of the energy system
for the next decades. However, the turning point
in any transition is when the additional
I. Introduction
9
investments are in the new direction, as is
already occuring for renewable energies in
contrast to fossil fuels use.
As remarked elsewhere [1], the limiting factor
today in the area of sustainability as a business
driver is the ability to recognize the key aspects
and business opportunities in an economic
context quickly changing for chemical and
energy production, and thus overcoming the
current limits in assessing processing using the
conventional technoeconomic tools.
When a fast-changing scenario is present, as
in the actual period, it is necessary to adopt
new assessment tools. For example, the feasi-
bility from a chemical engineering perspective
should include new aspects and assessment
methodologies. From a historical perspective,
going back to about 70 years ago when there
was a similar major change in chemical produc-
tion technologies, companies not able to adopt
new assessment methodologies have rapidly
lost their market positions. In fact, in the chemi-
cal industry, innovation skill is a key aspect in
business models, so especially in transition
periods, conservative approaches have often
led to a loss of markets [4]. Therefore, traditional
economic models and concepts, such as scale-
economy analysis, are not adequate to under-
stand the business potential of new production
models. New assessment tools have to be used.
They should include aspects such as understand-
ing socioeconomic macrotrends, the dynamic of
market change in transition periods, how to
introduce competitiveness in relation to full eco-
systems rather than specific local aspects, how
sustainability and integration into territories
are key winning elements (localization instead
of globalization), the presence of nonlinear
dynamics in the evolution of the costs, and
how extended life cycle cost and social analysis
have to be included [17,18].
Different strategies for sustainability can be
identified in the chemical sector [16] (Table 1.2).
The level of sustainability increases (from license
to operate to sustainability at the center) in going
10 1. The vision of future sustainable energy, catalyst, and chemistry: opportunities for innovation

TABLE 1.1 Sustainability megatrends create opportunities and risks for the chemical industry.

Sustainability megatrends Opportunities Risks

Water scarcity - Water filters, membranes, and - Public resistance to new plants, reduced water
purification systems availability, higher costs for heavy water consumption
- Improved water management and
reduced environmental costs
- Improved water-saving
technologies
Circular economy and - Thicker plastics for reusable - Shrinking demand for chemicals used in hard-to-
waste applications recycle plastics, such as PVC
- Materials/additives that support
recycling
- Regeneration/reuse in operations
- Industrial symbiosis
Green energy and energy - Utilization of renewable energy - Declining demand for fossil fuels from the chemical
efficiency - Adoption of biomass as fuel and industry
feedstock
- New technologies of production
Food security and safety - Fertilizers, pesticides, and - Reduced demand for packaging containing substances
herbicides that increase crop of concern
yields
- Solutions such as packing and
preservatives
Workplace health, safety, - Internal expertise leveraged to - Stricter penalties for noncompliance and incidents
security, and environment help other companies
Climate change - Saving energy and costs by - Greater scrutiny of manufacturing processes and
adopting new solutions greenhouse gas emissions
- CO2 as a feedstock
- Pushing new markets for
alternative to fossil fuels
Green products - Plastics and blends from - Shrinking demand for materials perceived as toxic or
renewable and biodegradable resource intensive
materials
- New materials based for example
on nanocellulose from waste
- Green solutions for chemicals

Adapted from C. Follette, U. Jung, I. Kharisov, A. Meyer, H. Rubel, Making a Business Case for Sustainability in Chemicals, Boston Consulting Group - BCG,
2017. Available at: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/making-business-case-sustainability-chemicals.aspx. Source: BCG analysis.

from basic to specialty chemical companies, but
sustainability is progressively becoming the
main business strategy also in large companies.
There are also different business cases in com-
pany strategies to identify the added value
created by sustainability approaches and how
to justify the needed investment.
1. Adopting eco-efficient processes. Focus is on
improving production methods to increase
sustainability, rather than changing the feed
and the product characteristics. It is thus
mainly a process- and technology-oriented
solution, with the payoff given from resource
and energy efficiency, and only in part from

I. Introduction
 2. Sustainability as a driver for company strategies 11
TABLE 1.2 Strategies for sustainability in chemical companies.

Sustainability
strategies Comments

1. License to operate - Just the minimum to meet regulations, including those expected in future. Due to the increasing
relevance of the company’s public image, the number of these companies is progressively
decreasing.
2. Isolated initiatives - There is some payoff in sustainability going beyond compliance, guided typically from
sustainability-oriented performance indicators to address areas of greatest concern. Often advisor
companies will guide in using the right indicators.
3. Full embrace - Sustainability is a key, but not the dominating element of corporate strategy. Companies invest
across multiple areas of sustainability, both to develop new products and services and to improve
internal operations. Clear goals and a broad set of metrics should be used.
4. Sustainability - Sustainability becomes the driving force behind new products and services. Due to global
innovator competition, sustainability becomes part of the brand to increase competitiveness. Rigorous
standards, from feed to circularity, should be used. Sustainability is the key for company image.
5. Sustainability at the - Particularly for some startup and small innovative companies, sustainability is at the core of market
center strategy, for example, of those in performance-oriented biopolymers made from renewables. The
entire business model is to serve the demand for sustainability.

Adapted from BCG analysis C. Follette, U. Jung, I. Kharisov, A. Meyer, H. Rubel, Making a Business Case for Sustainability in Chemicals, Boston Consulting
Group - BCG, 2017. Available at: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/making-business-case-sustainability-chemicals.aspx.

the company image because social visibility is
limited.
2. Embracing eco-efficient raw materials.
Existing products are redesigned to use new
ones based on more sustainable resources or
ones that decrease impact on circularity.
Payoff is either lower production costs or a
higher price premium. An example is the joint
venture between Total and Corbion to
produce PLA (polylactic acid or polylactide is
a thermoplastic aliphatic polyester derived
from renewable biomass). The biodegradable
plastics will reduce end user solid waste, and
for this reason, a higher price than
conventional plastics is accepted.
3. Fielding new offerings. New products and
services are developed in response to the
growing demand for sustainability. An
example is Climeworks, a new company able
to raise over US$30 million to commercialize
a technology to capture CO2 from air.
4. Improving downstream performance. The
products are modified to reduce waste or
lower carbon emissions, increase reusability
or recyclability, and in general decrease the
environmental footprint associated with
product use by consumers. The benefit
should be clearly demonstrated by a
comprehensive product life cycle
assessment. Plastics for automobiles, for
example, offer relevant potential for a price
premium when meeting these criteria.
Solvay, for example, developed lightweight
plastics that reduce product energy usage
and emissions for end users.
It is necessary for each company to analyze in
detail these approaches to build the company
business case. This requires one to do the
following:
- understand the impact of the new or altered
product over its life cycle,
- design the product to improve its life cycle
value and reduce its environmental footprint,
- quantify the benefits across the value chain
and defines the new cost structure,

I. Introduction
12 1. The vision of future sustainable energy, catalyst, and chemistry: opportunities for innovation
- analyze the market possibilities to pay a high
enough price to generate a return on the
investment,
- define the company communication strategy
to take advantage of this sustainability
strategy, with communication at different
levels (stakeholders, NGOs, public).
Sustainability will thus not have the same
meaning for different companies and sometimes
even for different divisions inside the company.
For this reason, defining a correct strategy for
sustainability requires one to have a clear but
broad business vision encompassing the many
complex aspects in this area and going largely
beyond the aforementioned conventional assess-
ment methodologies.
3. Opportunities for innovation and
business
The energy transition toward a more sustain-
able society is currently one of the most urgent
goals of the worldwide community. Moving
toward an almost carbon-neutral global society
and economy in the second half of the 21st
century will dramatically change the way fuels
and chemicals are produced. Direct use of RE
sources and CO2 reuse in chemical production
are going to be a great dare for chemical
engineering, which requires developing new
methods that instead using heat, produced
from the combustion of fossil fuels, running
operations with electrical or solar energy.
Imagine the possibility to realize a quite
compact process of making olefins from CO2
waste and H2O (using RE as an energy source)
[19,20], rather than having, as today, very large
plants (with issues connected to environmental
impact, product transport, large investments
necessary, high sensitivity from market fluctua-
tions) with a steam methane reformer or a steam
cracker for olefin production, with their quite
inefficient radiant sections, where the flue gases
I. Introduction
are leaving at a temperature higher than
1000
C and have a very large convection section.
Stacks and emissions are also going to disappear.
Today, too much plastic is being incinerated
instead of being recycled into new raw materials.
Today, recycling technologies have severe limi-
tations associated with poor quality goods and
high use of chemicals and energy. The six largest
soft drink producers use an average of only 6%
recycled PET material for their plastic bottles.
The need to reuse/recycle CO2 will converge
with the use of RE sources to define a new para-
digm where electricity, water, and CO2 are going
to be the only resources required. Imagine the
power-to-liquids (PtL) or power-to-gas (PtG) as
the production platform for gas and liquid
hydrocarbons and other chemicals [10].
A further step in developing such a platform
will be to extend the use of electrocatalytic tech-
nologies [21], not only for CO2 reduction both
also for other challenging reactions like direct
ammonia or even fertilizers from N2 [22,23], to
a broader range of reaction of interest for a
sustainable chemical production [1,11,12]: as
the 6e reduction to methanol or 8e reduction
to methane and even more challenging reactions
involving CeC bond formation. Examples are
the CO2 direct conversion to acetic acid/acetate,
ethylene, and ethanol. A new industrial chemis-
try can be created moving these still lab-scale
developments to commercial production.
3.1 The business opportunities
In the next decades, it will be a major change
in the production methods for fuels and chemi-
cals. Under the term production, the recycling
processes are also included: the recycling of plas-
tic wastes or municipal solid wastes conversion
are going to play a major role in coming decades,
making obsolete the conventional processes [24].
But these are only a few examples in such a
fast-changing arena, where the start of show-
cases will open to new opportunities to create
 3. Opportunities for innovation and business
value. An example is the waste-the-chemicals
area cited before [24]. Nouryon, a global
specialty chemical leader derived from AkzoNo-
bel Specialty Chemicals, is building a waste-
to-chemicals plant in the Netherlands to produce
methanol from residual waste. They formed a
consortium with Enerkem, Air Liquide, Port of
Rotterdam, and Shell to build the plant in Rotter-
dam with the support of the City of Rotterdam,
the province of South Holland, and Innovation-
Quarter. The new chemical plant will be based
on the technology developed by Enerkem, which
converts residual waste into syngas and then
into high-quality methanol, a chemical building
block used to make a broad range of everyday
products and as a renewable fuel. An Enerkem
commercial facility has been operating in Can-
ada since 2015. The Enerkem Alberta Biofuels
facility is helping the City of Edmonton increase
its waste diversion from 50% to 90%. The plant in
Rotterdam will be the first of its kind in Europe.
The planned facility (to be operative in 2021) will
convert up to 360,000 tons of waste into 220,000
tons (270 million liters) of bio-methanol. This
represents the total annual waste of more than
700,000 households and represents a CO2 emis-
sion savings estimated at about 300,000 tons
when compared to the production of methanol
from fossil fuels. Once the facility will be opera-
tive, it will represent a significant step toward a
sustainable and circular approach to waste
management.
Recently (June 2019), Maire Tecnimont group,
in particular through the controlled NextChem,
announced an agreement with Eni to develop
WtC (waste to chemical) technology to produce
H2 and methanol.
These are examples of WtC processes via gasi-
fication, and thus with a high carbon utilization
factor of the biowaste. Other examples in this
general area of waste biorefinery use only a frac-
tion of the waste to produce chemicals. One
example of this type is Biofine (now DPS Biomet-
rics, Inc.) that developed a process to convert the
cellulosic biowaste (cellulose component in
I. Introduction
13
paper mill sludge, municipal solid waste, waste-
paper or wood, and agricultural residues) into
levulinic acid (LA). LA can be used as a building
block for chemicals in many useful materials,
including pharmaceuticals, food additives, and
plastics. LA made from waste cellulose reduces
the use of fossil fuels and reduces by one order
of magnitude the overall cost of LA. In 2015,
GF Biochemical opened a 10,000-MT capacity
plant to produce LA from biomass on an indus-
trial scale.
These examples remark of how new business
opportunities are generated from the use of
biowaste as a carbon source. Although still
limited, industrial initiatives are starting and
opening new value chains. The value creation
process will encourage the decentralization of
innovation to promote and exploit creativity,
thinking out of the box, and participation
outside corporate structures.
New startup firms and even more informal
groups are going to be the center of such a
“cultural revolution” generating new ideas and
putting them in action, leaving to centralized
corporate structures the role of introducing inno-
vation in an efficient and effective way into the
production schemes.
To play such a role, “startup companies” need
not only to have fundamental knowledge of new
processes, materials, and catalysts, but also to
identify the crucial technology and when it
should be introduced, identifying solutions in
the short, medium, and long term. A sequence
of cost-effective solutions should be introduced
to reduce the initial cost barriers: on a short
term, using bankable infrastructure, either an
existing refinery or gas pipeline or industrialized
sites, will be fundamental to minimize invest-
ment and make the new projects bankable.
Negative examples in the last years are plenty.
In this respect, the succinic acid from biomass
[25] is a case example that needs to be carefully
analyzed to avoid falling into the same mistakes.
Succinic acid production was conceived a
decade ago, when oil cost was more than $100
14 1. The vision of future sustainable energy, catalyst, and chemistry: opportunities for innovation
per barrel and chemical industries were con-
cerned. When the plants opened, oil cost was
half that much and succinic acid was an after-
thought. The goal of this project was to use
biotechnology to ferment carbohydrates into
succinic acid at a cost low enough to open a large
volume polymer market. A product that was
once going to change the chemical industry
turned out to be an expensive disappointment.
For this reason, it is necessary to have a quite
critical view on both the technologic aspects,
identifying correctly the bottlenecks, but also
on the dynamic of cost development, the market
perspectives, and the alternative solutions. Just
looking to the scientific and technologic side is
not enough is this fast-evolving scenario.
4. Circular economy
As introduced before, creating a circular econ-
omy is the current main stream in macro regions
such as Europe, where resources are limited. A
circular economy aims to redefine growth,
focusing on positive society-wide benefits. It
entails gradually decoupling economic activity
from the consumption of finite resources and
designing waste out of the system. It is based
on three principles: (i) designing out waste and
pollution, (ii) keeping products and materials
in use, and (iii) regenerating natural systems.
Today, circularity is considered in close relation
to innovation for future chemicals. The basic
principle is to move from a “linear” economy
(e.g., raw materials are used to make a product,
and after its use, any waste like packaging is
thrown away) to a circular concept, which mini-
mizes waste formation and use of resources.
The principles of actions [26] are the
following:
- Preserve and enhance natural capital by
controlling finite stocks and balancing
renewable resource flows.
- Optimize resource yields by circulating
products, components, and materials at the
I. Introduction
highest utility at all times in both technical
and biologic cycles.
- Foster system effectiveness by revealing and
designing out negative externalities.
The circular economy keeps products at
highest utility and value, rather than passing
through a volcano shape in the value chain as
in the linear approach. This will thus signifi-
cantly impact the industrial competitiveness
along the value chain. In some industries, like
glass and steel industrial sectors, elements of
the circular economy are already at work and
are a relevant element for their competitiveness.
However, in the chemical industry, differently,
there is a modification of molecular bonds along
the value chain. This modification inherently
changes the nature of the product itself and is
therefore more challenging and energy inten-
sive to pursue [27]. This implies that circularity
in chemicals has some different aspects with
respect to the general case, in virtue of the spe-
cific value chain. Circularity in chemicals may
be addressed according to two perspectives
(Fig. 1.1) [28]:
- circulating molecules
- enabling the circular economy in downstream
industries
Circulating molecules means reusing and
recycling existing molecules that are tied up in
consumer products that have reached the end
of their lives. Up to 60% of the molecules
provided by the chemical industry to customer
industries and end users can be recirculated if
utilization of all five loops is maximized, as sum-
marized in Fig. 1.1 and shortly described next:
1. Substituting raw materials. The industry
could substitute some portion of fossil
feedstocks with renewable feedstocks.
2. Increased reuse of end user products. The
industry could focus on developing full suites
of new products and solutions that can
essentially be reused “as is,” such as durable
PET bottles.
 4. Circular economy 15

FIGURE 1.1 Enabling circularity and circulating molecules approaches for circularity in chemicals. The lines indicates loops
between the different steps of even the same step, for example, in the steps of raw materials or customer industry uses. Based on
indications in E. Bernd, M. Ulbrich, Taking the European Chemical Industry into the Circular Economy, Accenture, 2017. Available (Ex-
ecutive Summary) at: https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-45/Accenture-CEFIC-Report-Exec-Summary.pdf#zoom¼50.

3. Mechanical recycling. This involves reusing
existing materials without modifying their
chemical bond.
4. Chemical recycling. When molecules cannot
be reused in their intact structure, chemical
companies could modify the material’s
molecular bonds to recover hydrocarbons.
5. Energy recovery and carbon utilization. This
involves recovering the energy contained in
molecules by oxidizing hydrocarbons to CO2,
capturing it, and then building new chemical
feedstocks via a catalytic reaction.
4.1 Industrial symbiosis and change of
business model
Industrial symbiosis is the mutually beneficial
exchange of waste and by-products between
three or more parties. Based on ecologic mutu-
alism and nutrient flows within an ecosystem,
industrial symbiosis requires collaboration
across stakeholders within a relatively small
geographic proximity.
There are three opportunities for resource
exchange within an industrial symbiotic system:

However, industrial-scale chemical recycling - by-product exchange

and carbon utilization technology is not readily
available. Companies would have to make sig-
nificant investments in creating and operating
new circular economy processes. About 19
million tons (Mt) of material a year could be
processed through the mechanical recycling
loop in Europe, but doing so would require an
infrastructure investment of as much as EUR
10 to 20 billion. For a chemical recycling loop
that could handle 8 Mt a year, that figure could
be up to EUR 30 to 80 billion [28]. The comple-
mentary approach is enabling the circular econ-
omy in downstream industries (Fig. 1.1, top).
- utility and infrastructure sharing
- common service sharing
Industrial symbiosis often occurs within
industrial parks. Their evolution may be planned
or self-organized. Some governments and
private sector actors have planned eco-
industrial parks in attempts to revitalize sites,
stimulate job growth, and promote sustainable
development.
An example is the Kalundborg Symbiosis, the
world’s first functioning example of industrial
symbiosis [29]. Situated in Kalundborg,
Denmark, the symbiosis is based on publice

I. Introduction
16 1. The vision of future sustainable energy, catalyst, and chemistry: opportunities for innovation
private partnerships, with exchanges of energy,
water, and materials in closed loops. The vision
of Kalundborg Symbiosis is to be the world’s
leading industrial symbiosis with a circular
approach to production. An industrial symbiosis
constitutes a local partnership where partners
provide, share, and reuse resources to create a
shared value. The purpose of industrial symbio-
sis is to create loops of technical or biologic
materials while minimizing the leakage and
waste in the loop, by demonstrating some key
parts of a circular economy, at a local scale.
The result is that every year the combined bene-
fits for the partners are these:
- bottom-line savings of 24 MV
- 14 MV in socioeconomic savings
- reduction of 635,000 tons of CO2, 3.6 Mm3
water, 100 GWh of energy, 87,000 tons of
materials
5. Sustainability and circularity indexes
With the increasing role of sustainability as
part of a company’s strategies of development
or even a company’s mission, creating robust
methodologies to assess the sustainability degree
is becoming a crucial element, offering also pos-
sibilities for startup/spin-off companies to pro-
vide services in this direction.
Quantifying process sustainability is necessary
to achieve improved sustainability performance
or to compare different possibilities, but also for
company visibility [30]. Thus, the development
of indicators able to assess process sustainability
becomes crucial for decision-making. These indi-
cators should be able to collect and summarize
complex process operations of energy, mass,
and momentum transport phenomena into a
manageable amount of quantitative information
that is easy to analyze and communicate. Various
publications propose a list of indicators to
analyze sustainability [31e33]. More recently,
sustainability performance monitoring requires
I. Introduction
using more complex tools, such as using portfolio
sustainability assessments (PSA) [34]. PSA is a
methodology to steer a product portfolio toward
improved sustainability performance. Existing
methodologies, such as environmental or social
life cycle assessments (LCA), are not well suited
for this objective. Companies using PSA method-
ology to achieve improved sustainability have
results in various tangible business benefits,
such as (1) better decisions; more robust strate-
gies; (2) higher growth rate of more sustainable
solutions; (3) credible communication on sustain-
ability benefits; (4) stronger customer and stake-
holder relationships; (5) reduced risks; and (6)
improved corporate image. PSA does not focus
on aggregated company sustainability impacts,
such as quantifying total company emissions.
The PSA approach [34] is based on a variety of
inputs including environmental and social
impact, market perception, regulatory direction,
and other indicators, providing a robust
approach for companies to understand the risks
in the portfolio, take action, anddultimatelyd
transform the company’s product portfolio
toward improved sustainability performance.
The PSA methodology is based on five main
sequential steps [34]:
1. defining objectives, scope, and process
2. defining assessment segments
3. detecting market signals
4. categorizing the portfolio
5. reporting and using PSA results
There are a number of different sustainability
assessment methodologies for evaluating the
performance of industrial facilities or of prod-
ucts. The World Business Council for Sustainable
Development [35], the Global Reporting Initia-
tive [36], and OECD (Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development) standards [37]
are procedures used for monitoring sustainabil-
ity management in industries. An example is
their use to assess comparatively the sustainabil-
ity of three different reaction routes for dimethyl
carbonate: direct synthesis from carbon dioxide
 5. Sustainability and circularity indexes
and methanol, transesterification of methanol
and propylene carbonate, and oxidative carbon-
ylation of methanol [38]. CEFIC, the European
Council of Chemical Industries, has published
a guide on sustainability of products aimed to
introduce how sustainability may apply to
chemicals in practice [39]. Various additional
environmental performance assessment tech-
niques are available, such as AIChE total cost
assessment, life cycle analysis, and integral
biodiversity impact-assessment system [40 and
references therein]. Lou et al. [40] introduced a
set of new sustainability indexes to assess the
environmental and economic performances as
well as the sustainability of industrial systems
in a uniform approach. The approach was vali-
dated by a series of case studies.
As can be argued from this short survey, there
is not a unique, nor generally implemented,
approach to sustainability metrics. Even in the
academic activities, there is a long debate that
started about 2 decades ago [41] and continues
today [42] on green chemistry metrics. There
are widely used metrics, the E factor (kg
waste/kg product) and atom economy (mol wt
of product/sum of mol wt of starting materials),
introduced in the early 1990s and attempts to
revise them to distinguish between simple and
complete E factors, for example. Other mass-
based metrics such as process mass intensity
(PMI) and reaction mass efficiency (RME) have
been proposed. However, all these indexes are
not catching the complexity of assessment
sustainability in chemical production, even if
quite popular. At the same time, even more com-
plex methodologies, such as LCA and derived
approaches, have weaknesses in using databases
of processes that are often not correctly address-
ing the large variability in the production
methods of the same raw material and especially
the emerging new methodologies of production
in a fast-evolving scenario. Not uncommon,
LCA procedures give quite different results,
I. Introduction
17
based on the boundary limits, the type of data-
base used, and various other aspects of the meth-
odology. The case of bioethanol, with LCA study
results largely different in estimating from posi-
tive to negative its impact in terms of environ-
mental benefits, teaches about the necessary
care.
There is thus a serious concern on how apply
robust and widely accepted sustainability eval-
uation procedures and use them for assessing
sustainability strategies in the chemical indus-
tries. Sustainability guidelines, developed for
the chemical industry in Germany, but of
more general value, have been prepared by
the German sustainability initiative “Chemie3”
(Chemistry3) promoted by the German Chemi-
cal Industry Association.
Similar questions regard also assessing circu-
larity in chemicals. Although no unique defini-
tion of circularity and methodologies for its
quantitative assessment exist, there is some
effort in defining circularity indicators to
provide companies with a methodology and
tools to assess how well a product or company
performs in the context of a circular economy,
allowing companies to estimate how advanced
they are on their journey from linear to circular
[43]. A toolkit and methodology description
that can be downloaded include
(i) methodologies to measuring circularity, (ii)
dynamic modeling tool, and (iii) aggregator
tool. The following are distinguished:
- product-level methodology, with definition
and examples on how to determine material
circularity indicator [26],
- company-level methodology, which includes
aggregating material circularity indicators.
The indicators can be used as decision-
making tool for designers but might also be
used for several other purposes including inter-
nal reporting, procurement decisions, and the
evaluation or rating of companies. The
18 1. The vision of future sustainable energy, catalyst, and chemistry: opportunities for innovation

methodology was tested by a group of leading change in perspective and tools to use the
European businesses with real product data to evolving economic, social, and market scenario
ensure robustness and relevance economy-wide. to create business and innovation, is the neces-
In January 2018, the European Commission sary foundation on which to build technologic
adopted a monitoring framework for the circular opportunities. Sustainable energy, catalyst, and
economy, which aims at assessing progress to- green chemistry are the three pillars around
ward a circular economy in the European Union which to create these technology opportunities,
and its Member States. Circular economy metrics but without an understanding of the systemic
can be categorized into two types: macro-level change in the approach and assessment tools
national tools and activity- or product-based for decisions, it is not possible to create innova-
tools for businesses. National and sectoral level tion and business.
analysis, using national material flow accounts, For this reason, attention was given here to
does not provide a suitable level of detail for discuss the general aspects of sustainability and
businesses and their products. Business- or circularity, which are the crucial elements of
product-focused metrics have been also devel- the vision for the future. Technical aspects will
oped, in view of tracking material flows through be instead presented in the various chapters of
supply chain analysis, building on tools such as this book, together with more specific methodo-
bill of materials and LCA. These business metrics logical aspects on the procedures for evaluating
generally also consider core elements underpin- the impact, creating entrepreneurship, and man-
ning the circular economy, such as product aging intellectual properties. This chapter thus is
design, collaborative business models, reverse intended at creating the necessary change in
logistics, and wider system conditions, which mentality and attitude toward sustainability
can be assessed in either quantitative or qualita- and circularity to take full advantage on how
tive terms. For example, the circularity indica- translate the opportunities created from the tran-
tors, developed by the Ellen MacArthur sition in chemistry and energy to business
Foundation and Granta Design [26,43], focus through innovation.
on material flows in a business or product using
the concept of “material circularity indicator.”
The indicator is based on production inputs,
use phase utility, waste destination, and effi- List of abbreviations and acronyms
ciency of recycling, and it requires a detailed
AIChE American Institute of Chemical Engineers
bill of materials. Further complementary indica- BCG Boston Consulting Group
tors cover factors such as material price varia- CEFIC European Council of Chemical Industries
tion, energy use, and carbon emissions. IPR Intellectual property right
LA Levulinic acid
LCA Life cycle assessment
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development
6. Conclusions and future trends PET Polyethylene terephthalate
PLA Polylactic acid
In this introductory chapter, we have pro- PMI Process mass intensity
vided general background aspects around the PSA Portfolio sustainability assessments
PtG Power-to-gas
concepts of sustainability and circularity. In PtL Power-to-liquids
fact, obtaining a better understand of these PVC Polyvinyl chloride
aspects, and especially on how they require a RE Renewable energy

I. Introduction
 References
RME Reaction mass efficiency [12]
SME Small-medium enterprises
[13]
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