Fossil based chemistry is no longer fit for purpose: the future lies in a resilient new source of cleaner chemicals, says Sophie Roelants, COO and co-founder, AmphiStar.
Much of the chemical industry still relies on fossil carbon as both a feedstock and an energy source. This reliance creates impacts across extraction, refining, conversion, transport and end of life.
The carbon embedded in many chemical products is ultimately released as CO₂ through degradation or incineration, while conventional production can require high temperatures, high pressures and hazardous catalysts. Long global supply chains add further emissions and make manufacturers vulnerable to disruptions in energy and commodity markets.
Reducing the sector’s footprint will therefore require more than incremental efficiency gains. It will depend on alternative carbon sources, lower-impact production routes and supply chains that are less reliant on globally traded fossil resources.
Why feedstock matters
Much of the discussion around sustainable chemicals has focused on production technology. However, the environmental impact of a chemical is determined not only by how it is manufactured, but also by the origin of the feedstock from which it is produced.
For some chemicals, like surfactants, biotechnology has increasingly been used to provide a solution by replacing fossil feedstocks with virgin agricultural produce such as sugar, corn and vegetable oils, including palm oil.
While this reduces dependence on fossil carbon, it can introduce new environmental challenges through land use, irrigation and agrochemical use, while competing for these resources with food production.
These feedstocks are also subject to many of the same supply-chain pressures as fossil feedstocks, with the additional problem of climate-related crop failures and disease.
Therefore, attention is increasingly turning to second-generation feedstocks: organic waste, agricultural residues and industrial side streams. By using carbon that is already circulating within waste and side streams, these materials avoid the need for dedicated cultivation while creating value from resources that in a lot of cases are just discarded.
Fermentation is a key biotechnological process here, offering cleaner production than many conventional chemical processes, but its overall sustainability ultimately depends not only on the fermentation process itself, but on the feedstock entering the bioreactor.
Replacing fossil carbon with virgin agricultural feedstocks represents progress, but does not fully address the wider environmental and supply-chain challenges. Realising the full potential of industrial biotechnology will therefore depend on pairing biological production with more circular sources of carbon.
Biotechnology as a manufacturing platform
Biotechnology changes more than the source of carbon; it can also alter the conditions, configuration and location of chemical production.
Microbial fermentation uses organisms such as bacteria and yeasts as biocatalysts, typically operating in water-based systems at lower temperatures and pressures than many conventional petrochemical processes. This typically reduces energy demand and reliance on harsh catalysts.
A further advantage is the ability of some biological systems to process complex or unconventional feedstocks. Depending on the organism and pretreatment required, these can include food-processing residues, agricultural side streams and other forms of waste carbon.
This opens the possibility of locating production closer to feedstock suppliers, shortening transport routes and creating more regionally distributed manufacturing networks.
These approaches do not remove supply-chain risk entirely: where waste streams are used as feedstocks, they can vary in composition, volume and availability. Biological processes still require reliable utilities and downstream infrastructure.
However, they broaden the range of usable raw materials and reduce dependence on a small number of globally traded fossil or agricultural commodities. Biotechnology therefore offers not only a cleaner conversion route, but the basis for more diversified and potentially more resilient chemical production.
Biosurfactants: feedstock in practice
Microbial Biosurfactants provide an example of both the promise of industrial biotechnology and the challenges it still faces.
Produced by microorganisms rather than through conventional chemical synthesis, they can be manufactured under relatively mild conditions and provide biodegradable surfactant ingredients for personal care, household cleaning and many other industrial formulations.
However, like many biologically produced chemicals, most biosurfactants currently produced still rely on virgin sugar, vegetable oils or palm-derived first-generation feedstocks.
Although the conversion step is biological, these inputs can carry significant impacts through land use, irrigation, fertiliser use and exposure to volatile agricultural markets. As a result, the benefits of fermentation may be partly offset by the upstream footprint of the raw materials.
Increasing attention is therefore turning to second-generation feedstocks. AmphiStar, for example, uses microbial fermentation to convert bio-based waste and side streams, including food-processing residues and agricultural by-products, into biosurfactants. This approach avoids direct reliance on fossil carbon, palm oil and other purpose-grown crops.
Using waste creates additional technical challenges. Feedstocks may vary in composition, require pretreatment and introduce greater risks of contamination than purified sugar or vegetable oil. Production must also be matched to the local availability and consistency of suitable material streams.
Yet these challenges are offset by opportunities which are central to the value of the model. Waste-based biosurfactants can combine biological production with more circular sourcing, reducing pressure on land and virgin resources while diversifying the industry’s raw material base and cutting supply chains from thousands to tens or hundreds of miles.
Our lifecycle assessment indicates lower climate, land-use and resource impacts than the conventional and first-generation surfactants included in its comparison, illustrating the importance of evaluating both feedstock and process rather than relying on the term “bio-based” alone.
Looking ahead
Biotechnology is beginning to widen the options available to chemical manufacturers seeking a more diverse manufacturing base. From enzyme-enabled chemical production and gas fermentation to waste-based biosurfactants, emerging platforms are demonstrating that industrial chemicals can be made from a broader range of inputs than fossil resources or purpose-grown crops alone.
Scaling can be a challenge, but by no means an insurmountable one. Done correctly, it is quite possible for biotech innovators to deliver competitive economics and reliable output while managing variable feedstocks and complex downstream processing.
Carried out at scale, these processes offer savings not only in cost per unit but also in emissions per unit – savings that can be measured by an LCA that distinguishes genuine environmental improvements from changes that just shift impacts elsewhere.
Biotechnology is therefore moving beyond its role as an alternative production route. It is becoming a new manufacturing platform for producing both chemical building blocks and high-value specialty chemicals, with the potential to support cleaner, more diversified and more resilient supply chains.
