Carbon management could help aviation reduce reliance on newly extracted hydrocarbons by turning waste carbon into useful feedstocks

Carbon is seen as a problem. We measure it. We regulate it. We work to reduce it. Those efforts remain essential. Yet as energy demand rises and industries seek to lower emissions, it is increasingly clear that we have been asking only half the question.

Every day, carbon is emitted from industrial facilities or discarded in municipal waste streams, while new hydrocarbons are extracted to manufacture the fuels, chemicals and materials on which modern economies depend. This is not only an emissions problem. It is a profound inefficiency.

The case for circular carbon

The next phase of industrial development must therefore focus on carbon efficiency.

That begins with an uncomfortable reality. Power generation and road transport can increasingly reduce their dependence on carbon through electrification. Many other sectors cannot. Aviation, shipping, chemicals, and plastics will continue to require carbon-based molecules for decades to come.

The objective cannot be to remove carbon from sectors whose products depend on it. It must be to reduce their reliance on newly extracted hydrocarbons.

Our economy still follows a linear model: extract carbon, use it once, and discard it. Carbon management offers a more intelligent alternative; recovering carbon from industrial emissions and waste streams, keeping it in circulation and returning it to productive use.

Putting waste to work

Instead of viewing emissions solely as a liability to eliminate, we should recognise them for what they are: above-ground carbon. As I often say, emissions are simply trash with value in it. Why continue digging for new fossil carbon while discarding so much of what is already available?

And the urgency to adapt to this approach is growing. Demand for sustainable marine and aviation fuel (SAF) is accelerating as shippers and airlines seek lower-emission alternatives, while manufacturers face increasing pressure to reduce the carbon footprint of the chemicals, materials and products they place on the market. At the same time, industrial emissions and municipal waste streams continue to generate large volumes of carbon-rich feedstocks that are largely discarded. The challenge is no longer a shortage of carbon. It is how quickly we can create systems that keep existing carbon in productive use.

The Gulf’s opportunity

While the opportunity is global, some regions are moving particularly quickly to turn carbon management from theory into industrial reality. Across the Gulf, governments and industry are beginning to treat waste carbon as a strategic resource rather than a liability.

In the UAE, LanzaTech entered into separate 2023 agreements with ADNOC and Tadweer Group, reflecting two complementary routes for carbon management: industrial waste gases with ADNOC, and municipal waste with Tadweer.

Under the Tadweer Group agreement, a feasibility study assessed the potential to transform up to 350,000 tonnes of hard-to-recycle waste each year into approximately 120,000 tonnes of SAF annually, demonstrating the potential for a circular value chain from material that would otherwise be discarded. Similar such studies are currently underway in Oman and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to explore the use of industrial emissions and municipal and agricultural waste streams into chemicals, SAF and other lower emission products showing the cross-region applicability of circular carbon solutions.

These initiatives show that carbon management is no longer an abstract ambition; it is beginning to shape infrastructure, supply chains, and future fuel systems.

Rethinking energy security

The definition of energy security is evolving alongside this shift. For decades, it was largely determined by access to natural resources. Increasingly, it will also depend on how effectively economies manage the resources already in circulation. Recovering carbon from waste can diversify feedstocks, reinforce domestic manufacturing, reduce exposure to virgin fossil resources, and create more dependable supply chains.

Seen in those terms, carbon management is not merely an environmental objective. It is an industrial strategy; one that requires us to reconsider carbon not as a one-way journey from extraction to emission, but as a resource capable of successive productive uses. The more utility we derive from each molecule, the less new carbon we need to extract.

Embedding that approach at scale is now a question of execution. The technology increasingly exists. The carbon increasingly exists. The opportunity increasingly exists. The challenge now is connecting markets, investment and policy quickly enough to scale solutions before demand for low-carbon fuels and materials outpace supply.

Scaling carbon management will require action across the value chain: manufacturers redesigning supply chains, investors backing first-of-a-kind facilities and policymakers creating durable frameworks in which new markets can develop.

Building the system

No company can establish a circular carbon economy alone. It requires coordination across industry, finance, technology and government, connecting those that generate carbon waste with those capable of converting it into fuels, chemicals and materials.

Economies that act early will create new sources of industrial value, improve resource productivity and strengthen their competitive position.

That is precisely why global convening platforms, like ADIPEC, matter. If the challenge is no longer proving the technology but scaling deployment, then policymakers, investors, technology providers and industrial operators must work in closer concert than ever before. As one of the world’s largest energy gatherings, ADIPEC provides a valuable forum for those conversations, helping translate ambition into partnerships, projects and investment decisions. If carbon efficiency is to become a defining feature of future industrial systems, the collaborations that enable it must be built today.

For more than a century, industrial progress has depended on extracting new carbon from beneath the ground. And for decades, we have measured carbon primarily as a cost. The next phase of industrial progress may depend on recognising carbon as a resource. We do not face a shortage of carbon. We face a shortage of systems capable of keeping it in productive use.

Jennifer Holmgren is the CEO of LanzaTech

Source: Aviation Business Middle East