Beyond Solar Fuels: Renewable Energy-Driven Chemistry

The future feasibility of decarbonized industrial chemical pro-duction based on the substitution of fossil feedstocks (FFs)with renewable energy (RE) sources is discussed. Indeed, theuse of FFs as an energy source has the greatest impact on thegreenhouse gas emissions of chemical production. This futurescenario is indicated as “solar-driven” or “RE-driven” chemistry.Its possible implementation requires to go beyond the concept of solar fuels, in particular to address two key aspects: i) theuse of RE-driven processes for the production of base raw ma-terials, such as olefins, methanol, and ammonia, and ii) the de-velopment of novel RE-driven routes that simultaneously real-ize process and energy intensification, particularly in the direc-tion of a significant reduction of the number of the process steps.