Sustainable Catalytic Successor Technologies to Mitigate the Challenges Posed By the Scale of Global Human Needs

In 2019, the total global primary energy consumption was 581.5 exajoules due to the massive scale of global human needs. 36.1 billion metric tons of CO₂ were emitted because eighty percent of the required energy was produced using fossil fuels. The main purpose of this research was to analyze the global human needs, investigate their carbon footprint and how they are related to energy availability. The analysis showed that the increase in CO₂ emissions and the temperature of the Earth closely followed the increase in world population and their needs. Achieving complete resource security is crucial because it is widely known that the water-energy-food nexus depends on it. We also identified additional sectors that are critical. Since the carbon footprint of each sector is enormous, it is vital to transition from the currently used large-scale energy-intensive processes toward ethical, sustainable, and most importantly climate-friendly successor technologies that are capable of competing with the existing technologies. These successor technologies must use solar energy because the sun is the largest renewable energy source, and even more importantly, solar electricity can be used for electrocatalytic processes that can produce solar fuels and upgraded chemicals. Therefore, they would be a suitable alternative that can mitigate the issues with the scale of global human needs and solve the greatest challenge of humanity – providing a livable Earth for future generations.