Megatrends – megascience? Part 4

In the last three Editorials, I commented on how several megatrends influence science. Sixteen out of the commonly cited 20 megatrends were discussed. This Editorial finishes that analysis.

17. Climate change and environmental impacts – This is probably the megatrend about which everybody is most aware. Storms, global warming, and other climate issues daily fill TV news and newspapers. This made us environmentally very sensitive and the quest for reduced emissions to the atmosphere comes both from society and politics. Scientists have also reacted to that thread. First, Green Chemistry was proclaimed and this has had a massive impact. Today’s reagents are not the same anymore as 20 years ago. Even the way reactions are carried out has greatly changed under the green umbrella. Nowadays, we like to work solvent-free or using master solvents such as ionic liquids. Green Engineering is the counterpart of Green Chemistry. In this way, the lab-scale innovations are elevated to production-scale and the impact increases accordingly. This dual, cross-disciplinary orientation on green principles has led to the foundation of this journal, Green Processing and Synthesis. In a way it is also a result of climate change and thus rooted in the early active platforms such as the Club of Rome. Life-cycle assessment has become more than fashionable – it has turned into an essential, even a constitutional element of current EU projects and has become even a routine tool within companies. Another big issue is to provide enough energy for a growing population. Moreover, today’s energy sources are known to contribute to the CO₂ problem. Both issues demand energy efficiency which has become indispensable in modern process design. This stimulates imagination and creativity. Besides optimization of processing and heat integration, entirely new concepts are demanded – plasma, microwave, ultrasound and, most of all, (visible) photo activation are seen as promising techniques for a targeted and smart energy introduction.

On top of that, climate issues such as the CO₂ problem may even create new opportunities. Bayer has a large national project with the wonderful name DREAM PRODUCTION in which the CO₂ is converted into polyurethane polymers. A “dead” molecule becomes a wanted reaction block.

18. Urbanization – Cities grow to provide new housing for increasing populations. This reinforces other megatrends, which have been discussed before, such as the need for increased mobility. Urbanization also increases demands for energy provision, even though the trend is towards saving energy for a given task. Several other such indirect impacts can be envisioned. There is also direct stimulus such that the demand for construction chemistry is expected to grow. Yet, overall these effects are considered not to have much impact on changing chemistry, since the urbanization trend itself already occurred in the last decades and chemical industry has since long adapted to the respective raising quest for chemicals.

19. New political world order – Political leadership has always been subject to change in the last century. This has brought in Europe a change from states ruled alike in the 19th century towards modern democracies. Yet, this was and is a discontinuous process. While some decades have shown only minor changes in the political world order, significant changes had to be faced in other periods. Exceptionally, the two world wars have also changed the landscape of the chemical industry and research. These days, the overall changes have become less step changing as this was for the past century. This stepwise change has transformed into a more constant, persistent reformation in world order. Whereas this has much impact on society, the relevance for the chemical industry is seen as minor; at least in the well-developed regions with stable democracies.

20. Global risk society – This megatrend concerns the manner in which modern society organizes in response to risk. It is not thought to have notable impact on chemistry.