Biomass represents an abundant carbon-neutral renewable resource for the production of bioenergy and biomaterials, and its enhanced use would address several societal needs. Advances in genetics, biotechnology, process chemistry, and engineering are leading to a new manufacturing concept for converting renewable biomass to valuable fuels and products, generally referred to as the biorefinery. The integration of agroenergy crops and biorefinery manufacturing technologies offers the potential for the development of sustainable biopower and biomaterials that will lead to a new manufacturing paradigm.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is broadly recognised as having the potential to play a key role in meeting climate change targets, delivering low carbon heat and power, decarbonising industry and, more recently, its ability to facilitate the net removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere. However, despite this broad consensus and its technical maturity, CCS has not yet been deployed on a scale commensurate with the ambitions articulated a decade ago. Thus, in this paper we review the current state-of-the-art of CO₂ capture, transport, utilisation and storage from a multi-scale perspective, moving from the global to molecular scales. In light of the COP21 commitments to limit warming to less than 2 °C, we extend the remit of this study to include the key negative emissions technologies (NETs) of bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), and direct air capture (DAC). Cognisant of the non-technical barriers to deploying CCS, we reflect on recent experience from the UK's CCS commercialisation programme and consider the commercial and political barriers to the large-scale deployment of CCS. In all areas, we focus on identifying and clearly articulating the key research challenges that could usefully be addressed in the coming decade.

In recent years, Carbon Capture and Storage (Sequestration) (CCS) has been proposed as a potential method to allow the continued use of fossil-fuelled power stations whilst preventing emissions of CO₂ from reaching the atmosphere. Gas, coal (and biomass)-fired power stations can respond to changes in demand more readily than many other sources of electricity production, hence the importance of retaining them as an option in the energy mix. Here, we review the leading CO₂ capture technologies, available in the short and long term, and their technological maturity, before discussing CO₂ transport and storage. Current pilot plants and demonstrations are highlighted, as is the importance of optimising the CCS system as a whole. Other topics briefly discussed include the viability of both the capture of CO₂ from the air and CO₂ reutilisation as climate change mitigation strategies. Finally, we discuss the economic and legal aspects of CCS.

Sustainable solvents are a topic of growing interest in both the research community and the chemical industry due to a growing awareness of the impact of solvents on pollution, energy usage, and contributions to air quality and climate change. Solvent losses represent a major portion of organic pollution, and solvent removal represents a large proportion of process energy consumption. To counter these issues, a range of greener or more sustainable solvents have been proposed and developed over the past three decades. Much of the focus has been on the environmental credentials of the solvent itself, although how a substance is deployed is as important to sustainability as what it is made from. In this Review, we consider several aspects of the most prominent sustainable organic solvents in use today, ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents, supercritical fluids, switchable solvents, liquid polymers, and renewable solvents. We examine not only the performance of each class of solvent within the context of the reactions or extractions for which it is employed, but also give consideration to the wider context of the process and system within which the solvent is deployed. A wide range of technical, economic, and environmental factors are considered, giving a more complete picture of the current status of sustainable solvent research and development.

In this paper, three of the leading options for large scale CO₂ capture are reviewed from a technical perspective. We consider solvent-based chemisorption techniques, carbonate looping technology, and the so-called oxyfuel process. For each technology option, we give an overview of the technology, listing advantages and disadvantages. Subsequently, a discussion of the level of technological maturity is presented, and we conclude by identifying current gaps in knowledge and suggest areas with significant scope for future work. We then discuss the suitability of using ionic liquids as novel, environmentally benign solvents with which to capture CO₂. In addition, we consider alternatives to simply sequestering CO₂—we present a discussion on the possibility of recycling captured CO₂ and exploiting it as a C₁ building block for the sustainable manufacture of polymers, fine chemicals, and liquid fuels. Finally, we present a discussion of relevant systems engineering methodologies in carbon capture system design.