Alongside the staggering challenge of replacing the 85% of global energy that currently comes from fossil fuels, humanity must also reckon with how the critical systems which we depend on rely on fossil fuels as inputs. We need to learn to make steel without coal and fertilizer without natural gas.
We also need something aside from fossil fuels as a feedstock for plastics, which are now indispensable in every area of human endeavour from spaceflight to surgery. Research of the sort is taking place. For example, Professor Shu-Hong Yu’s team at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has produced non-petroleum based plastics which are twice as strong and tough as engineering plastics.