1

Introduction

Chemistry plays a pivotal role in the strength of the U.S. economy and in the well-being of humankind. Among many achievements, chemists have created life-saving pharmaceuticals and have been central in the development of controlled energy transformations, including nuclear, solar, and most importantly, the conversion of fossil energy to generate electricity and power the transportation system. Advances in chemistry have resulted in beneficial materials, from photovoltaic semiconductors to packaging to structural and construction materials. Contributions from chemists have been key to improving agricultural productivity since the development of the first synthetic fertilizers in the mid-18th century. Chemical processes are critical in the microfabrication of electronic devices that have revolutionized the way humans live, work, and play. In short, chemistry has contributed significantly to everyday lives of people everywhere and is critical to the nation’s economic prosperity, human health, food production, energy generation, security, and sustainability.

1.1 KEY THEMES OF THE REPORT

Despite chemistry’s many positive contributions to society, chemical processes and manufacturing of chemicals and materials present challenges of enormous magnitude that threaten the health of the planet. Fossil fuel combustion provides most of the energy demanded by society, but the associated production of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases is a major contributor to global warming, which is bringing about climate change with its devastating impacts. Synthetic polymers have revolutionized consumer products and packaging, including the packaging of food, thus reducing spoilage, but the proliferation of plastics is now a major environmental threat. Numerous synthetic chemicals are used in practical applications and are important contributors to the chemical economy. But a number of them have been found to be toxic or carcinogenic.

It is perhaps ironic, but further advances in fundamental chemistry are needed to address major problems arising from the use of chemistry. To transition away from fossil fuel energy, advances in the storage of electricity will be required to more fully implement the potential of solar photovoltaic electricity or of energy from wind. The needed improvement of electrochemical storage and energy

conversion devices, including electrolyzers, fuel cells, and batteries, could come from fundamental advances in electrocatalysis. To eliminate single-use plastics, recycling of valuable materials will depend on advances in polymer chemistry and catalysis.

Addressing these and other global challenges will require talented people in many disciplines of science, engineering, social sciences, and the humanities. However, fundamental innovations in chemistry may well be a key to addressing important global challenges, including the overarching goal of providing the energy the population needs at an affordable cost and without adverse consequences on the environment. Success will depend on a highly trained workforce fluent in both traditional chemistry and contemporary technologies, such as data science, computing, and automation, among others. Success will also require a willingness to increase investment in basic and applied chemical research.

The outcomes of the chemical economy depend on the critical and intertwined roles played by funding of chemical research and development (R&D), the research itself, the workforce, chemistry’s impact on human and planetary health, and its economic and societal impacts (Figure 1-1). As the committee discussed its charge, received input from colleagues and government agencies, and thought about these interconnected aspects of the chemical economy, the committee identified four themes on which to build this report. These themes are:

1. Balancing U.S. competitiveness and collaboration in the global chemical economy—Chemistry is a global enterprise and the United States is a key player. To better understand this situation, the committee determined that it was necessary to understand the historical and current positions of the United States in the global chemical economy and to understand how innovative discoveries in fundamental chemical research are key to sustaining and improving U.S. competitiveness. The role of chemistry in the economy is also pervasive. Many companies beyond those in chemical manufacturing employ chemists, such as companies focused on chemical instrumentation, forensics, and biotechnology. Thus, the competitiveness of the United States in many technology-based parts of the economy depends on continuing innovation in and collaboration with chemistry.
2. A changing landscape within the chemical enterprise—In many areas of chemistry, the landscape is changing. These changes are particularly prevalent in funding, the workforce, and training. Chemical manufacturers long supported fundamental chemical research within their companies, but while pharmaceutical companies have maintained their R&D programs, many chemical manufacturers have chosen to decrease the size and scale of in-house basic research programs over the past couple of decades. Recently, chemical companies have started collaborations with start-ups and university labs. The companies provide funding and industrial expertise while the other partner does the basic research that can be transferred to the company for further R&D. Increases in federal funding have been implemented in specific areas of research and have gone toward supporting training and research infrastructure. The mechanisms for training need to be continuously reevaluated because of the emergence of new technologies and the critical emphasis on equity and inclusion in the current and future chemical workforce.
3. Emerging processes and technologies—It is an axiom in science that those with the most advanced technology are first on the forefront of science, asking and answering critical scientific questions of the day. For the United States to enhance its competitive edge and grow its chemical economy, it must continue to innovate, and it must invest in state-of-the-art research infrastructure in the labs where people are trained and research is done. While there are many emerging areas that will drive innovation in the chemical sciences, the committee has identified four of particular importance. These are measurement, automation, computation, and catalysis. In addition, the committee strongly supports the need to expose chemistry students to how these technologies apply to chemistry and the chemical economy. For example, computational methods and data analysis have become integral to fundamental chemical research and industrial R&D.
4. A focus on sustainability—Both within the chemical economy and as a major global challenge that chemistry can help address, there is an urgent need to integrate sustainability into manufacturing, product usage, recycling, and product disposal. The feedstocks, processes, and products of the chemical industry and the ways in which consumers use those products have created significant problems in the form of pollution, environmental degradation, increased scarcity of natural resources such as rare earth metals, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. The chemical industry and fundamental chemical research are uniquely positioned to innovate and develop solutions that will greatly assist in solving these problems. To do so, approaches to chemistry must also undergo a paradigm shift to incorporate greener chemical practices at every stage of R&D including quantitative sustainability assessments to help guide chemical R&D.

1.2 REPORT DEFINITIONS

Behind these industrial-scale chemical processes and the chemical economy lie fundamental chemical research and chemical knowledge. Our chemical knowledge stems from education, training, and research in the chemical sciences as practiced at universities, research institutes, national laboratories, and private industries. To assess the national and global impact of our chemical knowledge, the committee considered its role in the U.S. economy by defining both its contribution as a part of the U.S. chemical economy and the meaning of fundamental research.

1.2.1 Chemical Economy

For this report, the committee chose to take a broad definition of the chemical economy. To help capture the wide breadth and importance of this topic, the committee chose the following definition:

Industries whose processes and value chains use this knowledge to make products as a part of the chemical economy include, among others, the petroleum industry, the energy sector, materials production, pharmaceuticals, and agrochemicals. When considering the value chains of these industries, the report is referring to each step from raw material to final products that involves a chemical transformation. Thus, if a raw material must undergo a biological transformation to make a feedstock that is then chemically transformed to products, the value chain starts from the feedstock.

Much of molecular biology, biochemistry, synthetic biology, and structural biology are based on fundamental chemical principles. However, this report limits its discussion of biology to instances where chemical principles are used to study biological phenomena, and when biological entities are used or modified to perform chemical functions—for example, when microbes are used as chemical sensors or when enzymes are modified to serve as catalysts in industrial production. The committee understands that it is exceptionally difficult to parse the life sciences into chemistry, biology, and the many other disciplines that are involved, due to the interdisciplinary nature of the field, but the report makes a note of when chemistry was integral to a biological discovery or process and also seeks to acknowledge the important roles of other disciplines in any advances and their economic success.

1.2.2 Fundamental Chemical Research

A variety of definitions exist for fundamental, basic, and applied research. Some sources use “fundamental” and “basic” as synonyms whereas others distinguish between the two (See Box 1-1). The committee chose to take a broad approach to defining fundamental chemical research in order to capture a broad range of chemical discovery. For the purposes of this report:

In the Stokes model of research quadrants, fundamental chemical research falls into both the Bohr (pure basic research) and Pasteur (use-inspired basic research) quadrants (Figure 1-2) (Stokes, 1997). The Bohr quadrant is important because of the unknowable influence of tools and basic discoveries and their possible widespread and unquantifiable impact on a number of areas of chemical research. However, most fundamental chemical research in the United States falls into the Pasteur

quadrant, in part because many scientific funding agencies have specific missions in areas such as health, energy, or agriculture. The variety of research in the Pasteur quadrant highlights a critical opportunity to use chemical knowledge in applications toward other areas of science, expanding the well-developed field of chemistry into an interdisciplinary research field that can be used to characterize and alter the physical properties of many more facets of the world around us.

1.3 IMAGINING THE FUTURE OF THE CHEMICAL ECONOMY

Many people view chemistry as a mature science; therefore, it is often overlooked when considering fields that are using and producing rapidly developing technologies. As the committee members continued to form their thoughts on the future of chemistry and the chemical economy, they were driven by input from experts and their own understanding of what new chemistries might be needed in different areas of research and industry. There are many scenarios to think through, but all provide a good idea of how technologies and advancements will be used and in what areas they are needed. This section highlights three scenarios that illustrate the thinking that helped the committee produce the final report.

1.3.1 Case 1: Future of Ammonia Beyond Haber-Bosch

Many traditional chemistries have been highly optimized, potentially making fundamental investigations in those areas less attractive than research in developing technological areas where more rapid advances are possible. However, with the increasing focus on mitigating climate change, this viewpoint is primed for change because highly optimized, mature technology spaces will need to be re-created. An example of where this has begun is in ammonia production.

Ammonia is currently produced via the Haber-Bosch process, one of the most important 20th-century inventions. Its inventors received two separate Nobel Prizes: Fritz Haber won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Carl Bosch was awarded the 1931 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was shared with Friedrich Bergius in recognition for his contributions to high-pressure chemistry in the unrelated technology of coal liquefaction (Nobel Prize Outreach, 2022a). Ammonia produced through the Haber-Bosch process is credited for enabling food production that feeds half the planet’s population (IEA, 2021a); therefore, it has been the focus of numerous fundamental probes to better understand nitrogen activation and fixation. Although the Haber-Bosch process resulted in a substantial improvement in energy efficiency over previous attempts to artificially fix nitrogen, scientific advances in combination with engineering improvements have further reduced its energy requirements by nearly 74% over the initial Haber-Bosch synthesis energetics (Figure 1-3) (Smith et al., 2020).

Recent advances are largely incremental and are in processes outside of the ammonia synthesis step. That step is so efficient that some people argue that further work in improving the catalyst itself may be difficult to defend (Schlögl, 2003). However, despite the success in reducing the process energetics, ammonia production still accounts for nearly 2% of global energy consumption and is one of the most carbon-intensive chemical processes, accounting for nearly 1.3% of global CO₂ emissions, despite there being no carbon incorporated into the final molecule. Ammonia’s CO₂ footprint is largely a result of the generation of hydrogen from fossil-derived feedstocks. With the need

to move toward net-zero carbon emissions, current production routes need to be improved (IEA, 2021a). While green hydrogen sourced through water electrolysis is a potential option to replace fossil-derived hydrogen, significant discoveries are needed to successfully marry green hydrogen production with the Haber-Bosch process, because these technologies are currently operated at very different scales. Advancements in catalysis, electrocatalysis, and adsorbents will be needed for this approach so that future ammonia production can be successful (Smith et al., 2020).

However, a move away from fossil-based technologies may also enable a shift away from Haber-Bosch to other ammonia synthesis options. For example, a recent paper highlighted the advantage of directly synthesizing ammonia from air and water without going through the independent synthesis of hydrogen (Schiffer and Manthiram, 2017). A wide range of approaches is being explored, including electrochemical, photochemical, biochemical, and hybrid ones (Boerner, 2019). These efforts are in early stages, with numerous needs for fundamental research advances.

Recently there has been a revitalization of ammonia investigations because the molecule has some unique properties. Ammonia can be liquefied at relatively mild conditions, readily stored, is 17.65% hydrogen by weight, and has a 45% higher volumetric hydrogen density than that of liquid hydrogen itself (Thomas and Parks, 2006). Thus, ammonia may increasingly be seen as a solution to large-scale storage and distribution of hydrogen, playing a key role in future clean energy, in addition to its traditional role of being a source for nitrogen. The potential for an ammonia-based economy, in which ammonia can be cracked to release hydrogen, burned directly in internal combustion engines, or utilized directly in fuel cells is already being envisioned (Figure 1-4) (MacFarlane et al., 2020). Although early commercial investments are being announced (Brown, 2020), full development of the envisioned ammonia-based economy will only be realized when there is a strong foundation of chemical knowledge arising from significant investment in fundamental chemical research.

1.3.2 Case 2: Needs for the Future Energy Landscape

Inorganic materials and elemental discoveries were prime chemistry research areas in the 1700s and early 1800s. During this era, electrochemistry was born, starting with Alessandro Volta’s

invention of the first battery, the voltaic pile, followed by William Nicholson’s use of the pile to begin experiments in water electrolysis (Fabbrizzi, 2019). Electrochemistry enabled Sir Humphrey Davy’s discovery of potassium and sodium as well as the first isolation of lithium by Davy and W.T. Brande.¹ Although exploratory work continued in these areas, the focus of chemical research shifted to organic chemistry and ultimately the birth and development of today’s petrochemical and polymer industries (American Chemical Society National Historic Chemical Landmarks, 1993; Ramberg, 2000; Stone, 2021). However, a new chemical research era is now beginning (Figure 1-5). With the increased need to shift toward renewable energy, chemistry will, in part, come full circle due to a renewed focus on inorganic molecules and electrochemistry, in addition to a shift toward activation of new carbon sources such as biomass and CO₂.

In this new era, inorganics will play an increasing role, especially as electrification expands. A recent International Energy Agency study estimated that demand for critical minerals related to clean energy technologies will quadruple, with some minerals such as lithium predicted to see a 13- to 51-fold increase in demand by 2040. Much of this increase will be needed to build out the electricity grid as well as for battery materials for electric vehicles and energy storage. Many of the new technologies will require increased mineral inputs compared with what is used in fossil fuel–based technologies. For example, an electric vehicle will require about six times the mineral inputs compared to a current internal combustion engine vehicle, and an onshore wind power plant will require nine times the minerals as a similar-size gas-fired power plant (IEA, 2021b). Such

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¹ For more information, see WebElements, https://webelements.com/.

comparisons led Forbes to conclude that “the energy transition will be fueled by metals” (Figure 1-6) (Mackenzie, 2020).

Mining and metals processing activities will have to rapidly increase to ensure that the needed metal is available for the energy transition, and this may exacerbate certain environmental concerns. Mining and processing of minerals are very energy, land, and water intensive and also incur a human cost. An estimate suggested that mining activities in 2018 accounted for nearly 10% of the total global energy-related CO₂ emissions (Azadi et al., 2020). Energy utilization is of particular concern in light of the decreasing ore quality of many of the needed minerals (Azadi et al., 2020; IEA, 2021b). In 2019 alone, more than 3.2 billion tonnes of ore were processed to supply metal demand (Bhutada, 2021), so decreasing ore quality is a concern from land-use and waste perspectives as well. Clearly there is a need to develop improved extraction methodologies to minimize the environmental impact of increased mining activities, and these innovations will strongly rely on fundamental research in new approaches for mineral activation and metals refining. Already, many new approaches are being reported, such as electrokinetic in situ leaching (Martens et al., 2021), electroextraction agromining (van der Ent et al., 2021), ligand-assisted displacement chromatography (Ding et al., 2020), and novel sulfidation techniques (Stinn and Allanore, 2022). In a similar vein, exploration of novel materials for metals removal from water streams is becoming an active area of research (Yang et al., 2019). Improving metal extraction and finding novel materials will need to take into account local communities and indigenous peoples who have frequently been victimized and marginalized in the pursuit of different mineral resources, including the cobalt and lithium used in most battery technologies (Frankel, 2016). A future chemical economy where environmental considerations are at the forefront cannot sacrifice human justice to accomplish other goals. As chemical researchers consider the environmental improvements associated with specific technologies, they can also consider what impact these improvements will have on communities. All these areas will require fundamental chemical research to allow for continued development. While metals recycling is well established for many current metals, recycling will need to play a large

role in the build-out and design of battery technologies (IEA, 2021b). Although various methods are being proposed, they have not always been developed utilizing a green chemistry approach, and thus many new chemistries will be needed to ensure that the methods are sustainable (Piątek et al., 2021). Recycling metals through sustainable methods will also aid in the security of the supply chain by keeping valuable metals in the United States. Doing more to build recyclability into battery designs is an area where fundamental chemistry will play a role (Thompson et al., 2020).

In addition to battery storage of electricity, storage of electrons in chemical bonds is becoming an increasingly popular area for study either through the generation of “green hydrogen” from water electrolysis (Møller et al., 2017) or through conversion of CO₂ to more useful chemical species (Klankermayer and Leitner, 2016). These chemical transformations can be viewed as a means to ultimately pivot the chemical industry to a non-fossil feedstock base. This transition will require the development of new materials in addition to new chemical processes (Figure 1-7) (Van Geem and Weckhuysen, 2021).

1.3.3 Case 3: The Future of Distributed and Additive Manufacturing

A move away from traditional fossil-derived feedstocks will likely have far-reaching implications in how chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and materials are produced. In many chemical manufacturing facilities, feedstocks are brought to a facility to be transformed to either the building blocks or the final end products, which are later transported to consumers. This model works well because fossil-derived feedstocks have high energy densities that enable manufacturing to optimize production costs via large-scale operations. Larger-scale production is advantaged over smaller-scale operations in most situations owing to economies of scale. However, potential future feedstocks such as biomass, plastics, and municipal solid waste are bulky with low energy density, features that will make long-range transport uneconomical, challenging the centralized manufacturing model. For example, biomass can only be economically transported about 40 to 80 km (Willems, 2009). For many of the future feedstocks, a smaller-scale distributed model where manufacturing is located near the feedstock source will often be advantaged over large-scale centralized options. In turn, this manufacturing pivot will create new research opportunities. By relying on localized feedstock sources, distributed manufacturing could build sustainable communities and also mitigate supply-chain issues inherent in importing feedstocks from foreign sources for centralized facilities.

Entirely new engineering approaches for small-scale manufacturing plants will be needed both for improving energy efficiency and for reducing manufacturing footprints. This will be a rich research space because these methodologies will be developed while simultaneously also inventing the new chemistries for managing and activating these feedstocks (DOE Office of Science, 2017; Wang et al., 2021). These efforts will need to be highly collaborative across disciplines and are likely to lead to rapid advances in fundamental understanding of chemical systems. For example, to develop chemistries and catalysts to intensify processes where unit operations are combined, such as directly linking reaction steps with separation steps, new catalysts, evaluation methods, and measurement techniques will be needed to allow systematic studies under non-steady state conditions (DOE Office of Science, 2017). Similarly, because many of these small facilities will be more dispersed, they may not be near other industrial facilities. Development of new sensor and automation techniques will improve process operability and rapid analysis of the chemical composition of incoming feedstocks, and together with predictive technologies enabled by machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) will provide a path toward more robust processes. Many of these approaches are being developed as part of the field of process analytical technology, and they will also open a broader landscape of new sensor R&D areas in adjacent and tangential fields as part of the so-called Internet of (Analytical) Things (Mayer and Baeumner, 2019).

While chemical processes are moving toward smaller distributed facilities, manufacturing techniques are also changing for other areas within the chemical economy where some of these same fundamental explorations will also be useful. For example, an exciting application space for process analytical technology is in the transition of pharmaceutical manufacturing to more continuous processing via flow chemistries. This shift from conventional batch processes offers many advantages including increasing pharmaceutical production efficiency and flexibility (Lee et al., 2015). Flow chemistry not only opens new manufacturing opportunities but also leads to entirely new approaches to drug discovery and synthesis by combining advanced analysis and control systems with AI, which allows chemists to probe new reaction conditions, utilize different precursors, and explore wider ranges of compositional space. This field of exploration will undoubtedly lead to improved pharmaceutical offerings and will greatly expand the knowledge of synthetic chemistry overall (Bogdan and Dombrowski, 2019).

Another advancement in manufacturing approaches lies in the future of highly customized offerings, such as those promised through additive manufacturing approaches such as 3-D printing (Figure 1-8). These techniques are already used in customized medical applications such as

instrumentation, implants, and prosthetics (FDA, 2017). Other potential medical applications include 3-D printing of organs, anatomical models to assist in medical treatment, customized drug formulations where medications could be printed on demand at pharmacies, and novel drug delivery systems through controlling the release of active components via unique form factors or material approaches (Ventola, 2014). These will be promising and active areas of research for the foreseeable future.

Additive manufacturing offers the potential to create intricate articles with a high degree of manufacturing flexibility. Unlike many conventional forming techniques, additive manufacturing is not subtractive, and thus it offers the potential to reduce manufacturing wastes (Alimi and Meijboom, 2021). However, it remains more of a specialized method because additive manufacturing cannot produce articles as quickly as conventional mass production, which makes the technique inherently more expensive for large-volume applications (Dilberoglu et al., 2017). Yet in a small-scale, distributed manufacturing future, the lower output will no longer be such a limitation for additive manufacturing’s broader adoption. Additive manufacturing may also help enable distributed manufacturing overall as the technique could be utilized to produce needed maintenance parts and minimize downtime of production facilities located in more remote locations (Westerweel et al., 2021). Currently the material properties of the needed parts may not be equivalent to those made with conventional techniques, and understanding the material property relationships and

developing new materials for additive manufacturing are important areas of study for addressing some of these concerns (Dilberoglu et al., 2017).

Despite these concerns, distributed manufacturing methodologies and additive manufacturing are accelerating scientific research. Whether it be through direct fabrication of intricate laboratory equipment, synthesis of catalysts (Alimi and Meijboom, 2021), or design of novel chromatographic materials (Agrawaal and Thompson, 2021), recognition of the true potential of these approaches is only now being more fully recognized. And as they become more ubiquitous in research laboratories, scientific research will only continue to expand and mature.

1.4 STUDY SCOPE AND APPROACH

The central question of the study is as follows: What can be done in fundamental chemistry that will enhance our lives, strengthen and safeguard the environment, contribute to the economy, and ensure international competitiveness for the United States into the future?

Like the question above, the charge that the committee received (Box 1-2) is broad in scope. To address the charge thoroughly and in ways that will assist the sponsors in planning, decision making, and allocating resources, the committee chose to approach the Statement of Task as follows. The first two bullets were tackled by looking through and commissioning different economic analyses and doing in-depth research on specific case studies in which fundamental chemistry led to significant contributions in manufacturing, environmental protection, the energy and power sector, and national security. In approaching the other two bullets of the Statement of Task, which touch on strategies and options for research investments, the committee was careful to avoid being too specific, due to the broad nature of the charge. They chose instead to focus on tools, technologies, and methodologies that will broadly advance all of fundamental chemistry while accomplishing the specifications outlined in the Statement of Task.

Early in 2021, the committee issued a request for proposals (Appendix B) to hire an independent contractor to perform an economic analysis of the impact of the chemical economy on the U.S. economy and to analyze the impact that fundamental chemical research has had on the chemical economy. In response to this request, the committee hired Vertex Evaluation and Research, LLC to perform the analysis. The team was led by Daniel Basco who worked closely with Lee Fleming,

a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, and the team closely consulted with IP Checkups, Inc. The final analysis was delivered to the committee in August, and the committee heard a final presentation from the contractors in September 2021.²

In addition to the economic analysis by Vertex, the committee heard from a number of people on topics germane to the study. The information-gathering process for the study took place from February 2021 to September 2021, during which the committee heard about the roles of the energy sector, materials production, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture in the U.S. chemical economy. In addition, they heard from experts in innovative chemical synthesis methods, automation, computational chemistry, and educating the next generation of chemists. There were also economists, venture capitalists, and representatives from private foundations and the U.S. Small Business Association who discussed best practices for supporting fundamental chemistry research and education. In total, 51 speakers and panelists from government, industry, academia, consulting, venture capital, and other fields spoke to the committee (for a list of speakers, see Appendix C). Several committee members also contacted individuals to ask them questions related to the study. The list of people to whom the committee spoke and the main takeaways from these conversations are listed in Appendix D.

To receive further input from the chemistry community, the committee engaged in several directed e-mail campaigns. First, a call for input (Appendix E) was sent to the listserves of the Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology, the Board on Life Sciences, and the National Materials and Manufacturing Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). Second, an e-mail was sent to the department head of every college and university chemistry department having a graduate program. In total, the call for input was sent to approximately 5,742 individuals, not accounting for individuals whose names appear on multiple listserves. Of those individuals who were contacted, the committee received 14 written responses with information to consider. These responses are available in the public access file of the report. All of these information-gathering activities greatly assisted the committee’s study process and were supported by a detailed review of the relevant literature.

1.5 PREVIOUS CONSENSUS STUDIES RELATED TO THE CHEMICAL ECONOMY

During the information-gathering process, the committee also looked to previously published reports and literature on chemical research and the chemical economy. While few published reports attempt to draw a direct connection between fundamental chemical research and the chemical economy, the National Academies have published several reports that are relevant to the committee’s research. Early in 2022, a complementary report, titled New Directions for Chemical Engineering, outlined critical future research needs for the chemical engineering community that would enhance environmental sustainability and increase the quality of life for all people (NASEM, 2022a). The chemical engineering report identified a wide breadth of focus areas where chemical engineering could make a large impact, including the decarbonization of energy systems, engineering targeted medical treatments and equitable access to medicine, and novel materials. All of the factors identified in the chemical engineering report influence the chemical economy and were therefore considered in careful detail.

There are many other relevant reports from the National Academies that helped with the exploration of ideas and concepts for this report. Some reports looked at the future of research in a particular area of chemistry, including the following:

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² The full report produced by Vertex Evaluation and Research, LLC (cited as “Fleming and Basco, 2021” throughout this report) is available through the public access file for this study.

• A Research Agenda for Transforming Separation Science, which focused on the future of separation technologies for chemistry, as well as the chemistry that enables them (NASEM, 2019a).
• Frontiers of Materials Research: A Decadal Survey, which put forth a research agenda for the next 10 years of materials science (NASEM, 2019b).
• Visualizing Chemistry: The Progress and Promise of Advanced Chemical Imaging, a report that looked at new advancements in measurement science (NRC, 2006b).
• Research at the Intersection of the Physical and Life Sciences, a report detailing avenues for physics and chemistry to explore questions in biology (NRC, 2010).

Other helpful reports looked at areas such as decarbonization, environmental stewardship, human health, and business regulations, all of which were important resources because of their impact on the chemical economy. These reports include the following:

• Innovations in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing on the Horizon: Technical Challenges, Regulatory Issues and Recommendations, a report that recommended new pathways forward based on the ongoing changes in pharmaceutical manufacturing (NASEM, 2021e).
• Gaseous Carbon Waste Streams Utilization: Status and Research Needs, a report that laid out a path for carbon utilization research and current needs (NASEM, 2019c).
• Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda, a report that analyzed the usability of several different negative emissions technologies and proposed a path forward for research and usage (NASEM, 2019e).
• Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy Systems, a report that laid out specific technological and socioeconomic goals for decarbonization efforts in the United States (NASEM, 2021b).
• Preparing for Future Products of Biotechnology, a report that looked at the regulatory frameworks around biotechnologies and identified gaps that might prevent future development (NASEM, 2017a).
• Safeguarding the Bioeconomy, a report that assessed the economic impact of the U.S. bioeconomy and considered national security concerns around new life sciences advances (NASEM, 2020b).

It is impossible to make an exhaustive list of all the relevant reports from the National Academies, especially since this section did not even mention reports that address chemical education, equity and inclusion in STEM, or economic analyses of the chemical industry. Many of these reports were analyzed over the course of this study, and are noted in the relevant chapters and sections.

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

This report is organized into six additional chapters. Chapters 2 through 6 build the case for why it is essential for the United States to make public and private investments in fundamental research in the chemical sciences. Starting with Chapter 2, the report lays out the data for the importance of chemical research and the chemical economy while also helping to identify different metrics for U.S. global competitiveness. Chapter 3 builds a case for how chemistry is influential toward, and dependent on, society and the shifting landscape of environmental sustainability. Chapter 4 looks at chemical research, points out important enabling tools and techniques, and helps to further the case for how chemistry can use these tools in the service of fundamental chemistry for

addressing environmental stewardship and sustainability. Chapter 5 assesses some key tenets that are needed for workforce development in the chemical sciences, while Chapter 6 looks at the current funding landscape in chemistry. Chapter 7 summarizes findings and recapitulates conclusions from earlier chapters, and it makes recommendations on where federal agencies, academic institutions, chemical companies, and private funders should focus resources and support of fundamental research in the chemical sciences to maximize innovation, foster a sustainable future for people and the planet, and continue to enhance the U.S. chemical economy and thus the U.S. economy overall.

Chemistry has an estimable record of accomplishments, discoveries, and innovations. Both fundamental discoveries and industrial applications have transformed societies and people’s lives in innumerable ways. But the problems that need solving today are different from the problems of the past. For example, the catalytic converter is a remarkable application of fundamental chemistry that significantly reduced air pollution from automobiles and reduced the health impacts of smog, especially in cities. But now the pressing problem is burning fossil fuels, and the apparent solutions will produce cars that no longer need catalytic converters. As society’s problems change, so must chemistry. New tools, new technologies, and new ways of thinking are needed, along with the adaptation of chemistry’s mature tools and technologies to be used in new and innovative ways.