Ioannou Iasonas, Galán-Martín Ángel, Pérez-Ramírez Javier, Guillén-Gosálbez Gonzalo
Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering, Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 1 8093 Zürich Switzerland
Department of Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, Universidad de Jaén Campus Las Lagunillas s/n 23071 Jaén Spain.
Energy Environ Sci. 2022 Aug 31;16(1):113-124. doi: 10.1039/d2ee01153k. eCollection 2023 Jan 18.
Carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) provides an appealing framework to turn carbon emissions into valuable fuels and chemicals. However, given the vast energy required to activate the CO molecule, CCU may have implications on sustainable development that are still poorly understood due to the narrow scope of current carbon footprint-oriented assessments lacking absolute sustainability thresholds. To bridge this gap, we developed a power-chemicals nexus model to look into the future and understand how we could produce 22 net-zero bulk chemicals of crucial importance in a sustainable manner by integrating fossil, CCU routes and power technologies, often assessed separately. We evaluated the environmental performance of these technologies in terms of their contribution to 5 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), using 16 life cycle assessment metrics and 9 planetary boundaries (PB) to quantify and interpret the impact values. We found that fossil chemicals could hamper the attainment of SDG 3 on good health and well-being and SDG 13 on climate change. CCU could help meet SDG 13 but would damage other SDGs due to burden-shifting to human health, water scarcity, and minerals and metals depletion impacts. The collateral damage could be mitigated by judiciously combining fossil and CCU routes with carbon-negative power sources guided by optimisation models incorporating SDGs-based performance criteria explicitly. Our work highlights the importance of embracing the SDGs in technology development to sensibly support the low-carbon energy and chemicals transition.
碳捕获与利用（CCU）提供了一个有吸引力的框架，可将碳排放转化为有价值的燃料和化学品。然而，鉴于激活CO分子需要大量能量，由于目前以碳足迹为导向的评估范围狭窄，缺乏绝对的可持续性阈值，CCU对可持续发展的影响仍知之甚少。为了弥补这一差距，我们开发了一个电力-化学品关联模型，以展望未来，并了解如何通过整合化石、CCU路线和电力技术，以可持续的方式生产22种至关重要的净零大宗化学品，而这些技术通常是分开评估的。我们使用16个生命周期评估指标和9个地球边界（PB）来量化和解释影响值，从这些技术对5个可持续发展目标（SDG）的贡献方面评估了它们的环境绩效。我们发现，化石化学品可能会阻碍关于良好健康和福祉的可持续发展目标3以及关于气候变化的可持续发展目标13的实现。CCU有助于实现可持续发展目标13，但由于将负担转移到人类健康、水资源短缺以及矿物和金属枯竭影响上，会损害其他可持续发展目标。通过在明确纳入基于可持续发展目标的绩效标准的优化模型的指导下，明智地将化石和CCU路线与负碳电源相结合，可以减轻附带损害。我们的工作强调了在技术开发中纳入可持续发展目标以明智地支持低碳能源和化学品转型的重要性。
