Engineering Biology for Climate & Sustainability (September 2022)

Engineering Biology for Climate & Sustainability: A Research Roadmap for a Cleaner Future highlights innovative solutions and opportunities in engineering biology to support global efforts to tackle the climate crisis, enable sustainable products and solutions, and grow the circular bioeconomy. The roadmap identifies novel approaches, objectives, and aims for engineering biology research in climate change mitigation and adaptation that can help to lower greenhouse gases, reduce and remove pollution, and promote biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. The roadmap also identifies opportunities for engineering biology-enabled, sustainable replacements and alternatives in the food and agriculture sector, transportation and energy sectors, and for materials and industrial processes. These potential solutions include biobased alternatives to synthetic fertilizers, better energy storage with biobased batteries, and sustainable, climate-friendly biomaterials to replace non-degradable plastics and toxic textile dyes, among many others. The roadmap’s opportunities and objectives are laid out as short-, medium-, and long-term milestones, to address the challenges of climate change and sustainability with both urgency and persistent ambition and vision for the development and translation of engineering biology tools to technologies and products for the current and next-generation bioeconomy. In addition to the technical roadmap, social and nontechnical dimensions case studies provide context and framing for the questions and considerations that can be asked and addressed during research and development, and are intended to be used as a discussion and learning tool by engineering biology researchers and their collaborators. Finally, a glossary provides a quick reference for the terms and concepts included in the technical roadmap.

Visit https://roadmap.ebrc.org/engineering-biology-for-climate-sustainability to view or download the roadmap.