Enzymes for consumer products to achieve climate neutrality

Abstract

Today, the chemosphere's and biosphere's compositions of the planet are changing faster than experienced during the past thousand years. CO2 emissions fromfossil fuel combustion are rising dramatically, including those fromprocessing,manufacturing and consuming everyday products; this rate of greenhouse gas emission (36.2 gigatons accumulated in 2022) is raising global temperatures and destabilizing the climate, which is one of the most influential forces on our planet. As our world warms up, our climate will enter a period of constant turbulence, affectingmore than 85% of our ecosystems, including the delicate web of life on these systems, and impacting socioeconomic networks. How do we deal with the green transition tominimize climate change and its impacts while we are facing these new realities? One of the solutions is to use renewable natural resources. Indeed, nature itself, through the working parts of its living systems, the enzymes, can significantly contribute to achieve climate neutrality and good ecological/biodiversity status. Annually they can help decreasing CO2 emissions by 1-2.5 billion-tons, carbon demand by about 200 million-tons, and chemical demand by about 90 million-tons. With current climate change goals, we review the consequences of climate change atmultiple scales and how enzymes can counteract or mitigate them.We then focus on how they mobilize sustainable and greener innovations in consumer products that have a high contribution to global carbon emissions. Finally, key innovations and challenges to be solved at the enzyme and product levels are discussed.