In the recent times, there has been a sharp surge in the popularity of environment-friendly and renewable chemicals across the world. Moreover, the rising environmental degradation being caused due to the large-scale usage of the conventional chemicals will give wings to the global demand for renewable chemicals in the coming years. Due to global warming, deteriorating air quality levels, increasing emission of greenhouse gases, and rising water pollution, the usage of conventional chemicals, that consist of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other toxic and polluting substances, is decreasing rapidly in industries.
The other major factor fueling the surge in the sales of renewable chemicals is the increasing implementation of stringent policies aimed at reducing environmental damage by various environmental and government regulatory authorities around the world. For instance, the European Union (EU) has recently enacted the REACH (registration, evaluation, authorisation, and restriction of chemicals) regulation for protecting the environment and human health from the various risks that can be posed by the utilization of chemicals in the region.
In addition to the aforementioned factors, the rapid technological advancements and innovations being in renewable chemicals and the abundant availability of low-cost feedstock are further augmenting the sales of these eco-friendly chemicals across the world. Furthermore, because of the rapidly declining reserves of various fossil fuels such as oil, industries are increasingly incorporating the use of petroleum alternatives such as renewable chemicals. This is, in turn, propelling the advancement of the global renewable chemicals market. As per the forecast of the market research company, P&S Intelligence, the market will grow exponentially in the forthcoming years.
These chemicals are usually produced from renewable feedstocks such as microorganisms, agriculture raw materials, and biomass. They basically serve as substitutes for the conventionally used petroleum-based chemicals. Organic acids, platform chemicals, ketones, biopolymers, and alcohols are the most commonly used types of renewable chemicals around the world. They are heavily used in various applications pertaining to resins, consumer goods, lubricants, plastics, and surfactants. Thermo-chemical conversion, gasification/fermentation, acid hydrolysis, reductive transformation, product separation and bioconversion, production of Fischer-Tropsch diesel, fermentation and bioconversion, enzymatic hydrolysis, and dehydrative transformation are the multiple kinds of production processes used for producing renewable chemicals.
Transportation, food safety, communication, environment, textiles, housing, health and hygiene, agriculture, bio-medical, and recreation are the major application areas of these chemicals. Due to the presence of strict government policies and regulations in several countries and the rising awareness amongst the masses about environmental conservation, the sales of eco-friendly products including renewable chemicals are increasing at an explosive pace all over the world, especially for use in agriculture, bio-medical, and environment applications.
Hence, it can be said with surety that the usage of renewable chemicals will increase tremendously in various industrial applications across the world in the future years, due to the growing demand for eco-friendly materials and chemicals and the rising requirement for petroleum-alternatives in industries on account of the rapidly depleting reserves of oil around the world.