Renewable Chemicals Market Analysis - Global Industry Size, Share, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2024

Renewable chemicals are utilized for augmenting the usage of renewable resources rather than that of fossil fuels. The chemicals that are produced from renewable feedstock such as biomass (animal, plant, and marine), micro organisms, and agricultural raw materials are called as renewable chemicals. Factors such as stringent regulatory guidelines, environmental concerns and rising awareness among masses are increasing the use of bio-based products that are obtained from biomass sources, leading to the market expansion for renewable chemicals.

There are varied applications of renewable chemicals across different industries such as housing, food processing, environment, textiles, hygiene, pharmaceutical, transportation, and others. Renewable chemicals are available in market in the form of ketones, organic acids, alcohols, and bio-polymers. They are used in consumer goods, resins, surfactants and lubricants, and plastics for environmental purpose.

There is an increasing global inclination towards oil independency, rising awareness towards limiting carbon foot prints in order to deal with situation such as global warming and landfills, and rising consumer preferences towards natural product. Also, reducing petroleum resources, continuous price fluctuation of petroleum products, and political instability in major oil producing countries has enabled the acceptance of renewable chemicals across the world. 

Owing to the stringent regulations being imposed by regulatory bodies in order to check the environmental damage, increasing customer inclination towards using environment-friendly products, abundance of renewable chemicals, the global renewable chemicals market is witnessing tremendous growth. However, pricing issues and problems pertaining to the development of renewable chemicals are the factors that are hindering the growth of renewable chemicals market. Deforestation and rising concern of policy makers over food security has come across as a major challenge for the diversification of global renewable chemicals market.

The global renewable chemicals market is categorized based on chemical properties of renewable chemicals. They are divided into polymers, ketones, polyhydroxyalkanoates, alcohols, bio-based polyethylene, organic acid, and others. Alcohol segment commanded the largest share in this market. The polymer segment is expected to witness rapid growth over the future years. Also, the rising demand for green packaging materials from consumer goods and food and beverages sector is estimated to fuel the growth of polymer market in future years. Based on the end-user application, the global renewable chemicals market can be divided into transportation, fertilizers, textiles, housing, industrial, consumer goods packaging, food and beverages packaging, bio-medicals, recreation, agriculture, environment, and health and hygiene.

Currently, Europe commands the largest market share in the renewable chemicals market. However, over the forecast years, Asia-Pacific is expected to rapidly drive the market growth, and is expected to dominate the global renewable chemicals market by 2020. Factors propelling the growth of this region include improving economic growth of the Asian countries and increase in population, thereby leading to the high demand for renewable chemicals. Different technologies being used for producing renewable chemicals from biomass include thermo-chemical conversion, fermentation and bioconversion, dehydrative transformation, production of Fischer-Tropsch diesel, acid hydrolysis, enzymatic hydrolysis, reductive transformation, product separation and bioconversion, and gasification/fermentation.

The key players operating in the renewable chemicals market include E. I. Dupont De Nemours & Company, Chevron Corporation, Dow Chemicals, BASF, Verenium Corporation, Degussa Evonik, Cargill Incorporated, Novozymes, Arkenol Inc, Group, and PureVision Technology Inc.

Market Segmentation

Market by Type

·         Polymers

·         Ketones

·         Polyhydroxyalkanoates

·         Alcohols

·         Bio-based polyethylene

·         Organic acid

·         Others

Market by End-user

·         Transportation

·         Fertilizers

·         Textiles

·         Industrial

·         Consumer goods packaging

·         Food and beverages packaging

·         Bio-medicals

·         Health and hygiene

·         Others

Market by Production Process

·         Thermo-chemical conversion

·         Fermentation and bioconversion

·         Dehydrative transformation

·         Production of Fischer-Tropsch diesel

·         Acid hydrolysis

·         Enzymatic hydrolysis

·         Reductive transformation

·         Product separation and bioconversion

·         Gasification/fermentation

Market by Geography

·         North America

o   US

o   Canada

o   Mexico

·         Europe

o   UK

o   Germany

o   France

o   Rest of Europe

·         Asia-Pacific

o   China

o   Japan

o   India

o   Philippines

o   Rest of Asia-Pacific

·         Latin America

o    Brazil

o   Chile

o   Rest of Latin America

·         Middle East and Africa (MEA)

o   South Africa

o   Saudi Arabia

o   Rest of MEA