The Carbon Element – Key towards a sustainable society

During this event, speakers from the European Commission, the European Parliament, JRC, academia and the industry sector will whether carbon could be depicted as an endangered or conflict element in the next edition of the EuChemS Periodic Table. The online webinar will also provide an opportunity to discuss the EuChemS Periodic Table.

The scope of this webinar is to focus on the scientific and technological challenges of decarbonization and to discuss some key issues such as the carbon cycle, fossil fuel reserves and the perspectives of carbon sequestration and utilization in the energy and chemical sector.

In 2019, the European Chemical Society (EuChemS) published the periodic table of the relative abundance of chemical elements, in an effort to raise society’s awareness of the limited mineral resources of our fragile planet. It has received remarkable attention worldwide by the scientific community, the general public and public agencies and has been widely distributed in European secondary schools. The table was conceived as a living document, to be periodically updated in the light of technological, societal and geopolitical developments, which may affect the availability or status (i.e., obtained from conflict minerals) of specific elements. In this context, EuChemS has undertaken a plan for monitoring selected elements over time so as to determine if their colour or size on the table should be revised.

Europe is a global leader in the ongoing effort to avoid catastrophic climate change. Recently, the EU has set even more ambitious plans to decarbonize our economies and reach climate neutrality by 2050, a daunting endeavour to be accomplished in only three decades.