Green and sustainable chemistry aims to minimize the potential negative impact of chemicals and their production on human health, ecosystems, biodiversity, and the environment. Accelerating adoption of green and sustainable chemistry is critical to meeting United Nations sustainable development goals (UN SDGs) and addressing climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss in the coming decades.
Funders and researchers alike could benefit from a common method of connecting research to these societal goals. The method could be used to evaluate the impact of funding portfolios and better align research initiatives with impact on sustainable development. Such alignment will be critical to reaching UN SDGs by 2030.
To establish an overview of the current funding landscape for green and sustainable chemistry, the ACS Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI), with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, undertook a year-long project to elucidate opportunities for public and private funders to contribute to achieving the UN SDGs and climate-mitigation goals.
The project consisted of three objectives:
- Convene funding organizations to share information about current and near-future
funding interests. - Analyze emerging areas of research anticipated to have a catalytic impact on
green chemistry and UN SDGs by developing a hierarchical neural network approach. - Prioritize and analyze emerging areas of research.
Of the nine fields the study examined, analytical chemistry and theoretical and computational chemistry were found to have the lowest funding levels. While funding for theoretical and computational chemistry increased during the study period, it remains the lowest-funded field. Because of their relevance to the fundamental chemical and process design, increased funding for analytical chemistry and theoretical and computational chemistry could have a catalytic impact toward meeting the UN SDGs. Additionally, of the grants and funding awarded globally between 2013 and 2022 for basic research in the chemical sciences, industrial biotechnology, and chemical engineering, 64% of the total funding and 81% of individual grants awarded had no connection to UN SDGs. Funding
for green and sustainable chemistry applications must increase if we are to reach societal goals such as UN SDGs.