• Email Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Whatsapp X You have full access to this article via your institution. • Europe and China do not need to compete on the development of defossilization technologies.Credit: Florian Gaertner/Photothek/Getty Last month, we described some of the nascent steps a number of European countries are taking towards defossilization - that is, to find sustainable sources of carbon (Nature649, 267; 2026). • Under net-zero emissions scenarios, carbon-based compounds will still be needed for the manufacture of everyday consumer products, including detergents, medicines and plastics. • However, they cannot continue to come from fossil sources such as coal, natural gas and oil. • Defossilize our chemical world Defossilize our chemical world Companies can make carbon-based molecules without exploiting fossil hydrocarbons by reacting carbon dioxide with hydrogen. • The CO2can be captured from existing fossil-based energy production or directly from the air, and hydrogen atoms can be extracted from water molecules, separating them from the oxygen atoms using a source of renewable energy.
Article Summaries:
- Last month, we described some of the nascent steps a number of European countries are taking towards defossilization - that is, to find sustainable sources of carbon (Nature 649, 267; 2026). Under net-zero emissions scenarios, carbon-based compounds will still be needed for the manufacture of everyday consumer products, including detergents, medicines and plastics. However, they cannot continue to come from fossil sources such as coal, natural gas and oil. Defossilize our chemical world Companies can make carbon-based molecules without exploiting fossil hydrocarbons by reacting carbon dioxide
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