‘Sustainable development, climate change and the CO2 refinery’ with Professor Michael North

Our society currently operates on a linear economy approach developed in the 19th century in which fossil fuels are used once and converted into carbon dioxide waste. This is unsustainable both in terms of feedstock supply and ever rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

We are starting to transition to a circular economy model based on sustainable feedstocks and the utilisation of the waste from one process as the feedstock for another.

In this interactive presentation, these concepts will be highlighted with an emphasis on environmental, social and economic sustainability applied to CO2 emissions.

The impact of population growth, global development and individual wealth on CO2 emissions will be discussed.

It will be shown that waste carbon dioxide can itself be a sustainable feedstock for a future chemicals industry through the development of a carbon dioxide refinery.

Michael North obtained his BSc from Durham University and his D.Phil from the University of Oxford. Since 2013, he has been Professor of Green Chemistry within the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York. Prior to this he held organic chemistry academic positions at the Universities of Newcastle, London and Wales.

Michael’s research interests are focussed on: chemistry in green solvents, CO2 utilization, catalysis by Earth crust abundant metals, and synthesis of polymers from sustainable feedstocks. He has published over 200 papers and is a named inventor on six patents.

He was awarded the 2001 Descartes Prize by the European Commission and the 2014 green chemistry award by the Royal Society of Chemistry.