Systems thinking towards net zero chemicals

Professor Jin Xuan (University of Surrey)

According to a United Nations report, chemicals production and consumption are to be doubled in the next 10 years to fulfil our essential needs. It’s simply not going to happen unless we adopt a circular economy approach to enable net zero chemicals. The UKRI Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Chemical Economy was established in January 2021 to kick start the timely transition of the UK’s £32bn chemical industry into a circular system. In this talk, I will discuss why we need a whole system approach and an interdisciplinary team to address the challenge. I will give some examples of the on-going research in our Centre to tackle the challenges in the development of the circular economy and net zero chemicals.