Sustainable Development – Challenges for the European CAPE Community

Abstract

The European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) is taking up the challenge of sustainable development by installing a special Sustainability Section to discuss the wide ranging implications of this development concept. Sustainable development will require a thorough re-structuring of chemical industry within the next decades and a fundamental re-orientation of the way chemical engineers pursue their research, technological development and design work as well. This poses new and formidable challenges to the European CAPE community. Three challenges require new CAPE solutions in particular • The integration of life cycle assessment into chemical engineering design; • A change towards renewable resources for energy provision and raw materials for industrial processes; • A systemic approach to integrating chemical industry sustainably into supply chains while providing energy services to society at the same time. The re-orientation of chemical engineering research and design is already visible in the efforts of young chemical engineering researchers. Interdisciplinary research as well as tackling the tasks linked to the new role of chemical engineering within sustainable development is more and more defining the work of young chemical engineers. This has been particularly visible in the CAPE Forum 2013, that brought together an interdisciplinary group of researchers from 13 European countries to discuss these challenges of sustainable development and that fostered the discourse between young researchers and experienced scientists and practitioners. The paper will link the results of the 32 contributions to the CAPE Forum 2013 and the on-going initiatives in the Sustainability Section of the EFCE to generate a picture of the future role of the CAPE community with regard to sustainable development.