The logic behind why Bio-based Materials (BBM) has become a hotspot in today's industry, science and technology, and investment world is that BBM does not produce new carbon dioxide, which is conducive to mitigating climate warming and lack of resources.
Let's start by looking at why carbon dioxide is linked to warming. The first discovery of this relationship was made 168 years ago.
In 1856, Eunice Foote, an amateur female scientist in the United States, first demonstrated that atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor have a greenhouse effect, which in turn causes climate change. In her paper, she used experiments to illustrate the important role of carbon dioxide and water vapor in the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is an effect in which short-wave radiation from the sun can penetrate the atmosphere and reach the ground, while the long-wave radiation emitted after the ground warms up is absorbed by carbon dioxide and other substances in the atmosphere, resulting in a warming of the atmosphere.
However, since the Industrial Revolution, human production and life have consumed a large amount of fossil energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas, and have cumulatively emitted about 2.5 trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which emits a large amount of carbon dioxide gas and enters the atmosphere after combustion of these fossil energy sources. Carbon dioxide gas has the function of absorbing and insulating heat, and its concentration in the atmosphere increases to form an invisible shield that prevents the energy radiated by the sun to the earth from being emitted into outer space, and the earth's surface becomes hotter. the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, found that the current global average surface temperature is about 1°C higher than the pre-industrial level. the projected change in average temperature over the next 20 years shows that global warming is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C. global warming is projected to be 1.5°C or more.
Therefore, to be more precise, the culprit of climate warming is not carbon dioxide per se, but fossil carbon extracted by human beings from the earth's crust and additionally emitted into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. As we mentioned in the previous article, "4 Means to Achieve the "Dual Carbon" Goal", carbon substitution, carbon emission reduction, carbon sequestration and carbon recycling are the main means to reduce emissions.
Specifically in industry, carbon recycling refers to the use of recyclable or renewable materials to produce industrial products. Bio-based materials are renewable materials, sourced from biomass (e.g., food, straw cellulose, agricultural and forestry waste, etc.), and the carbon dioxide utilized in the growing process of crops and the carbon dioxide produced by the manufacturing process can offset each other without contributing to climate warming.
Yao Xianping, an academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and president of the Hangzhou Research Institute of Chemical Industry in China, said that biobased materials are an effective carrier for collecting carbon, fixing carbon, and efficiently utilizing carbon, and that the global biobased materials are growing at an annual rate of 27%. Each year, 148 billion to 180 billion tons of global biomass energy, only 3% is used, the United States 2030 bio-based products will replace 25% of organic chemicals and 20% of petroleum raw materials, about 85% of plastics can be replaced by bio-based plastics.
