Why do we need ‘renewable carbon’? In order to fight climate change, we need to curb our consumption of fossil resources. This has been shown in many studies and several of them even quantify how much of the remaining fossil resources need to be left in the ground. In the energy sector, this is possible through ‘decarbonisation’. However, this strategy is not feasible for organic chemistry, which is defined by the use of carbon. So, for the important chemical and plastic industries, we need to find alternative carbon sources in order to shift towards a more sustainable and climate‐friendly production and consumption. We call these alternative carbon sources ‘renewable carbon’. Staying with the widely accepted concept of ‘decarbonisation’ is not only inaccurate for the chemical and plastics industry, it is also dangerous, since it shifts attention away from the inevitability of carbon use and therefore from the question of the ‘right’ carbon sources. Furthermore, in light of growing scarcity of other finite resources – metals, minerals, rare earths – carbon will be an important backbone of humankind's product needs, since it is available in almost unlimited quantities in the atmosphere. The equivalent to decarbonisation in the energy sector is a transition to renewable carbon in the chemical and plastics industries. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

中文翻译：

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可再生碳：可持续发展和面向未来的化学和塑料工业的关键：定义，战略，措施和潜力

为什么我们需要“可再生碳”？为了应对气候变化，我们需要遏制化石资源的消耗。许多研究已经证明了这一点，其中一些研究甚至量化了需要将多少剩余的化石资源留在地下。在能源领域，这可以通过“脱碳”来实现。但是，这种策略对于有机化学是不可行的，这是通过使用碳来定义的。因此，对于重要的化学和塑料工业，我们需要寻找替代碳源，以便朝着更具可持续性和气候友好性的生产和消费方向发展。我们称这些替代碳源为“可再生碳”。坚持被广泛接受的“脱碳”概念不仅对化学和塑料行业不准确，而且很危险，因为这将注意力从不可避免的碳使用转移到了“正确的”碳源问题上。此外，鉴于其他有限资源（金属，矿物，稀土）的日益稀缺，碳将成为人类产品需求的重要支柱，因为碳在大气中的数量几乎是无限的。能源领域的脱碳等同于化学和塑料行业向可再生碳的过渡。©2020年化学工业协会和John Wiley＆Sons，Ltd.