Market and product

For decades, chemistry has been treated as a mature industry: essential, but commoditized and with limited opportunities for invention and growth. That assumption is obsolete, but it persists because green chemistry is still too often invisible to the people making industrial strategy. Too few leaders understand that it is not simply a cleaner or less toxic way to make yesterday’s products, but a new way to design the materials, processes and supply chains that will define tomorrow’s competitiveness.

Quietly, advances in green chemistry are beginning to reshape industries, from AI infrastructure and batteries to advanced manufacturing and critical minerals processing. The economic logic is straightforward. When companies redesign materials and production processes at the molecular level, the gains stack up quickly. Better performance. New functionality. Lower input and energy costs. Faster regulatory approvals. New products that were not previously possible, with less future litigation risk and more resilience to supply chain shocks.

Pharmaceutical companies have used catalytic production – substances that speed up chemical reactions and reduce waste – to improve yields in the manufacturing of cancer treatments and other medicines.

Consumer goods companies are phasing out forever chemicals and working to reduce microplastics. Researchers at the Mars Advanced Research Institute, for example, are working with partners to develop easily compostable microbe-based plastics for food packaging and moisture-blocking natural materials like chitin, which is produced by some varieties of crustaceans.

Apple is using “smarter chemistry” to drive the development and use of innovative materials that it says enable the creation of products that are safer, more recyclable, and support industry-wide change.

Researchers at Arizona State University developed asphalt binders that are more flexible and durable, while a team of scientists from King’s College London and Swansea University are working on a “self-healing” asphalt capable of fixing small cracks and extending road-surface life by 30%. These inventions have the potential to reduce repairs costs while also reducing emissions.

New classes of PFAS-free cooling fluids – engineered at the molecular level – are being tested for deployment in data centers. Better and safer thermodynamics for chip cooling would reduce energy and water usage, and therefore potentially ease some of the valid concerns of communities across the country against data center expansion.

At the same time, green chemists are now utilizing AI to design new molecules, optimize reactions and simulate materials, compressing development timelines that once took years. The result is a win-win: green chemistry can enable AI to scale; AI will accelerate advances in green chemistry.

A recent survey of U.S. research, development and technology leaders, conducted by Morning Consult on ⁠behalf of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, found that 71% of respondents are willing to invest in green chemistry to gain a competitive edge.

That’s the good news. Unfortunately, willingness is not the same as adoption. The same survey found that only 27% of leaders say green chemistry is currently part of their R&D strategy. Among the key barriers cited are perceived upfront costs, budget constraints and challenges integrating new approaches into existing infrastructure.

That gap between strategic interest and industrial execution is precisely why green chemistry needs to move from isolated innovation projects to core business strategy.

Industrial strategy has long been framed around trade-offs – performance versus cost, growth versus sustainability. But ⁠when materials and production processes are designed to be both higher performing and healthy from the start, companies can improve profitability, reduce waste, lower regulatory and litigation risk, and strengthen supply-chain resilience – all at the same time.

Although upfront costs may be higher, green chemistry saves money and resources in the long run, as 72% of R&D and tech leaders surveyed by the Morning Consult said. Surely it’s time to treat the costs of adoption ⁠as strategic investments, and fund the technical teams, pilot facilities, procurement pathways and regulatory expertise needed to move green chemistry from promising science to industrial practice.

The companies that lead the next industrial era will not simply build better software or larger data centers. They will redesign the material basis of their businesses. Those that move first will shape the next generation of industrial advantage.