Are our Visions of the Future Development Realistic?

The Grand Challenges of Humanity lying ahead also require behavioral changes. Thus, it is important that appropriate awareness on the influence is created, which each individual actually has. This can be achieved based on corresponding scenario simulations.

Typically, the current scenarios for policymakers are generated with complex integrated assessment models (IAMs). Such complex simulations can fail to appropriately describe reality (H. Hasse, 2003: Thermodynamics of Reactive Separation. In: K. Sundmacher, A. Kienle (Eds.): Reactive Distillation Status and Future Directions. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim).

It turns out, that major dependencies for future development can be described with global balances on materials and energy fluxes with only few assumptions. It was especially possible to include some of the major variables relevant for development of chemical industry like the variation between bio-based or CO2-based chemistry as well as including the option of direct air capture to obtain CO2 (DECHEMA, FutureCamp, 2019: Roadmap Chemie 2050, Auf dem Weg zu einer treibhausgasneutralen chemischen Industrie in Deutschland). Thus, the developed tool allows to question the published scenarios with respect to plausibility with unexpected outcome. The changes required in individual behavior are derived with a persuasive power similar to that of a limited carbon budget.