ABSTRACT
Sustainability, in essence the development of methodologies to meet the needs of the present without compromising those of future generations has become a watchword for modern society, with developed and developing nations and multinational corporations promoting international research programmes into sustainable food, energy, materials and even city planning. In the context of energy and materials (specifically synthetic chemicals), despite significant growth in proven and predicted fossil fuel reserves over the next two decades, notably heavy crude oil, tar sands, deepwater wells, and shale oil and gas, there are great uncertainties in the economics of their exploitation via current extraction methodologies,
and crucially, an increasing proportion of such carbon resources (estimates vary between 65 and 80 % [1-3]) cannot be burned without breaching the UNFCC targets for a 2°C increase in mean global temperature relative to the pre-industrial level [4, 5]. There is clearly a tightrope to walk between meeting rising energy demands, predicted to rise 50 % globally by 2040 [6] and the requirement to mitigate current CO2 emissions and hence climate change. The quest for sustainable resources to meet the demands of a rapidly rising global population represents one of this century’s grand challenges [7, 8].
