Introduction
Solving the global climate crisis is contingent on ending the world economy’s addiction to fossil fuels, phasing out the use of synthetic pesticides and toxic chemicals, and moving toward new systems of clean production, agroecology, and green transportation. This includes the adoption of new technologies alongside production and extraction systems that reduce the consumption of raw natural resources. Alternative technologies under more democratic forms of social control and ownership are a necessary part of building cleaner production processes to replace our toxics-laden manufacturing and agricultural systems, as well as our fossil-fuel dependent public infrastructure. Given the current state of anti-environmentalism exhibited by the federal government of the United States, the shift towards a truly transformative, socially just and green economy demands that we also seek new approaches and solutions outside of traditional federal funding sources and policies. The task before us is a herculean shift towards both higher energy efficiency and, more importantly, less consumption, extraction, and waste.
The over-reliance on fossil fuels and related by-products continues to remain stubbornly high in the world economy. In the United States, which is among the top emitters of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the world, the continued rollback of hard-won environmental regulations threatens to take us past critical tipping points where devastating climate change impacts become unstoppable. The domination of our federal political system by what Daniel Faber terms “the polluter-industrial complex” (PIC), a powerful network of industries that profit the most from the dismantling of environmental and climate-related programs, is at the core of this political assault on the ecological vitality of the Earth.
With the financial and political backing of the PIC, the Trump administration is initiating an aggressive rollback of federal environmental, climate, and consumer product safety initiatives. Within the first hundred days of his second term alone, President Trump has already launched a wholesale attack on critical climate policies, environmental and public health regulations, and federal funding of major programs (including renewable technologies and green infrastructure).
Beyond the use of fossil fuels for heating and transportation, it is critical we examine the other global industries powered by fossil fuels. We must especially consider how toxic chemicals and climate change are interconnected. One way to achieve this is by examining our critical industrial sectors — specifically, petrochemicals and cement — that are at the forefront of toxics production in both the United States and other nations. Alongside iron/steel and aluminum, petrochemicals and cement form the top four “hard-to-abate” industrial sectors that present a set of special challenges in the pursuit of decarbonization.
The petrochemical industry is one of the world’s largest manufacturing industries, reaching an estimated market size of $734 billion (USD) in 2024. By 2029, the industry is expected to be worth $983 billion. It accounts for up to ten percent of total GHG emissions and eighteen percent of all industrial carbon dioxide emissions, which is slated to increase by twenty percent by 2030 and thirty percent by 2050. Meanwhile, the global construction industry utilizes an estimated 4 billion tons of cement annually. The global cement industry is massive, totalling $505.97 billion in sales in 2024. Cement accounts for eight percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, which if counted as a country, ranks fourth in GHG emissions, just behind China, the United States, and India. Unless we can arrest the deepening reliance on petrochemical-laden and old, carbon-intensive technologies like those used in cement production, the climate crisis is destined to worsen.
Getting Off the Treadmill of Toxic Chemicals Production
The energy, manufacturing, and construction industries are critical economic sectors that must be decoupled from fossil fuels in order to achieve dramatic reductions of total GHG emissions. Solving the climate crisis necessitates that critical manufacturing centers and infrastructure are decoupled not only from fossil fuels, but also from the production of toxic chemicals. Green chemistry, safer alternatives to toxic chemicals, closed loop systems, renewable energy, and alternative green technologies offer a pathway for achieving clean production.
The expanding production and release of hazardous chemicals into the environment induces a mutually reinforcing toxics–climate change “treadmill”; where the relentless pursuit of ever-higher corporate profits only serves to exacerbate human health problems, ecological degradation, and climate change. Although it receives less attention than the burning of fossil fuels, the industrial manufacturing of toxic chemicals and hazardous pollutants also creates significant GHG emissions and cascading climatic impacts. This is because certain synthetic chemicals are GHGs themselves. Hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, and nitrogen trifluoride are synthetic, powerful GHGs that are emitted from a variety of household, commercial, and industrial applications and processes.
Furthermore, through the vaporization of chemicals into the atmosphere, the breakdown of chemicals into toxic byproducts, and the increased mobility of pollutants due to changes in global weather patterns, we are witnessing how industrial emissions aggravate mutually reinforcing human health problems and climate change. Only by ending the production of toxics, with transformative, beginning-of-pipeline solutions, can we stop this treadmill.
Depowering Fossil Fuel Energy
Fossil fuels today account for over seventy-five percent of global GHG emissions and nearly ninety percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Since 1751, the world economy has emitted over 1.5 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, with the United States responsible for almost one quarter — 400 million tons — of these historical emissions. In order to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, as mandated by the United Nations Paris Agreement that was signed by 195 international parties, GHG emissions would need to peak by 2025 and decline forty-three percent by 2030. Combatting the climactic and toxicological impacts of fossil fuels requires a transition to clean energy and clean production. Major advancements towards the large-scale implementation of renewable alternatives are already in place, providing more than a quarter of the world’s electricity.
It is forecasted that by 2030, renewable energy generation will climb to over 17,000 terawatt-hours, meeting the projected needs of both China and the United States, the top two global carbon emitters. This is equivalent to meeting nearly half of projected global energy demand. The decarbonization of global energy systems is a vital component to mitigating the climate crisis, and the transition away from fossil fuels to renewables is already occurring. Countries like Iceland, Uruguay, and Costa Rica have already made enormous progress in decarbonizing their national energy grids. Some 98 percent of electricity generation in Uruguay now comes for renewables like hydropower, wind, biomass, and solar.
Beyond Fossil Fuels: A Clean & Just Transition
Moving beyond fossil fuels requires a clean and just transition, not only in the energy sector, but in terms of all industrial productive capacity. The coal, oil, natural gas, and petrochemical companies responsible for the climate crisis are often the same industries fueling a human health crisis related to occupational and public exposure to toxic chemicals and pollution. Much of this toxic pollution is concentrated in communities that lack the political-economic power to defend themselves from corporate polluters and indifferent government agencies.
In fact, the creation of ecological sacrifice zones, or areas facing heightened environmental hazards due to excessive industry pollution, are an example of how fundamental rights for citizens and humans to a healthy environment are continually violated by the petrochemical industry. The intensification of weather disasters additionally exacerbates hazardous releases from petrochemical facilities into marginalized neighborhoods. Along with climate change,
The growing concentration of highly polluting industries in low-income communities of color and White working class neighborhoods all over the world is one of the most significant issues of our time.
The climate crisis and the phenomenon of unequal ecological exposure, or the disproportionate burden of environmental health hazards borne by marginalized communities, are an intersectional issue where multiple dimensions of class, racial, and ethnic inequalities interact and compound each other. A non-intersectional analysis on climate change would miss the deeply rooted and inter-related power structures that facilitate environmental injustices. Hence, it is necessary to look at climate change in an intersectional manner, with consideration of how political-economic systems and existing power structures reinforce the climate and environmental health crises.
Subsequently, it is important to note that the growing role of toxics produced by the petrochemical industry is one of the key blind spots in the climate change movement and media discourse today. Decarbonization discourse has largely followed a non-intersectional, reductionist approach, limited in focus on the transition to renewable energy as the sole solution to climate change. Such an approach ignores the mechanisms by which critical industries, namely the petrochemical industry, continue to preserve fossil fuel resilience and social inequities in spite of global decarbonization efforts.
As it currently stands, the oil and gas industry fears the introduction of new decarbonization technologies increasingly taking hold in the near future. This will threaten their continued dominance over global energy markets.
However, the expansion of plastics use and other petrochemical-based markets promises to prolong the lifeline of their fossil fuel infrastructure by other means. Some of today’s top chemical companies are recognizable more as multinational oil and gas corporations than as petrochemical producers, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell.
Petrochemicals are produced through an industrial process called “cracking,” where extreme heat and pressure are used to break down fossil fuels into their constituent chemical components. Oil and natural gas account for ninety-nine percent of chemical feedstocks, and the remainder come from biomass and coal. Seven primary chemicals — ammonia, methanol, ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene, and mixed xylenes — are the key building blocks of the chemical industry, and are used to form ninety-five percent of all manufactured goods. These include plastics, industrial and agricultural chemicals, synthetic fibers and clothing textiles, and building materials. Demand for the primary chemicals driving this industry is set to increase by around 30 percent by 2030 and almost 60 percent by 2050. In other words, the continual expansion of chemical production promises to be big money for the oil and gas industry.
Roughly 2.4 billion metric tons of petrochemicals were produced in 2023. The petrochemical industry is the largest industrial consumer of fossil fuels in the world. It also ranks third in industrial GHG emissions. Chemical production contributes to climate change through three primary mechanisms: (1) the use of fossil fuels as feedstocks; (2) the use of fossil fuel energy; and (3) the production of chemicals that are potent GHGs. Petrochemicals are on track to becoming the largest driver of global oil demand, largely due to a projected 40 percent increase in plastic production over the next decade. Alongside fertilizers, plastics account for 70 percent of petrochemical production by mass.
Despite being valued for their low-cost, versatility, and durability, many of these fossil-fuel derived substances are endocrine disrupting chemicals that are associated with cancers, cardiovascular disease, infertility, and neurological and immune impairment.
Petrochemical infrastructure has embedded itself into all facets of global society, magnifying the dosages of toxic chemicals that we are exposed to,
leading to unavoidable bioaccumulation that may fester into severe health complications. We cannot escape them. As a form of “toxic trespass,” the pervasiveness of these chemicals in our natural and built environments results in the invasion of our bodies with extremely hazardous substances on an almost daily basis.
Plastics are highly ubiquitous, and virtually all household and industrial goods are rooted in petrochemical and plastic derivatives. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical commonly found in plastic food and beverage containers, but is recognized as a substance of “very high concern” in the European Union. Dioxin, one of the world's most toxic substances with no safe dosage, can also be found in plastic products. Other known toxic chemicals in plastics include alkylphenols, phthalates, perfluorinated compounds (PFAs & PFOAs), brominated flame retardants (BFRs), and UV stabilizers. In short, the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries are poisoning the world for profit. A movement towards clean production of manufactured goods is clearly necessary to combat the health and climate implications of prolonging fossil fuel infrastructure.
Constructing a Clean Cement Industry
Some 75 percent of the infrastructure expected to be in place by 2050 has yet to be built. Cement, the binder of concrete, is crucial to modern infrastructure and is used in virtually all construction projects. However, traditional cement production constitutes a whopping 8 percent of total global carbon emissions. The modern construction industry primarily relies on ordinary portland cement (OPC) for concrete, which requires limestone to be superheated to create cement clinker. Some 40 percent of embodied carbon dioxide emissions during cement production come from burning fossil fuels to heat clinker kilns to 1500°C, a temperature necessary to form the crystal structure of OPC. The remaining 60 percent of embodied emissions comes directly from the calcination of limestone in the kiln, where carbon dioxide is released as a byproduct of the chemical reaction. The production of traditional OPC, even if supplemented by renewable energy, is therefore bound to unavoidable emissions.
The cement production process is additionally infamous for releasing hazardous industrial air pollutants like sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide, and mercury; which are linked to premature death, neurological problems, asthma, and other respiratory diseases. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including toxic dioxins, furans, and PCBs additionally cause respiratory and eye irritation, fever, nausea, and injuries to the liver, kidney and central nervous system. Wastewater runoff from cement plants also causes contamination of waterways and water supplies.
The traditional cement industry maintains the practice of “externalizing” costs and environmental health risks by displacing the harms of cement production onto the general public in the form of toxic pollution. The “greening” of the historically dirty cement industry may seem unachievable as strength and durability of cement simply cannot be compromised. While there were limited alternatives in the past, recent advancements in new technology have opened up pathways for the decarbonization and detoxification of cement production.
New green cement companies like Sublime Systems instead are putting an eco-friendly spin on the more traditional methods, working to eliminate the carbon dioxide output of cement production and produce a superior cement product. New production processes, including the recycling of demolition waste by Cambridge Electric Cement and other companies, offer great promise. The need is real. Nearly every cement company has committed to being net zero by 2050, and 94 percent of engineers and contractors reported that clients are requesting reductions in embodied carbon.
Eco-Colonialism and Climate Injustice
The pervasive use of toxic chemicals by corporate America fuels social and ecological injustice. The over-exploitation of the natural world in the name of profit maximization is contributing to catastrophic environmental pollution, biodiversity and habitat loss, and massive human health problems, including a cancer epidemic that affects millions of Americans every year. Toxic consumer products and unsafe production processes operate under the presumption that certain populations are expendable, namely low-income people of color and White working class communities. Nevertheless, everybody in society is exposed to undesirable quantities of toxic chemical exposures from toxic product life cycles; from the chemical and product manufacturing processes, to the use of completed commercial products, and even when products are discarded as wastes.
Through the perpetuation of fossil fuel infrastructure, corporations are contributing to climate change; including sea level rise, heatwaves, extreme rainfall and flooding, intensified hurricanes, prolonged wildfire seasons, a scarcity of safe drinking water, droughts, and increased disease. Environmental justice communities made up of low-income people of color and working class whites are pigeonholed into facing the greatest chemical exposures. In fact,
Petrochemical plants are overwhelmingly located in or near low income, working-class, and minority communities.
Institutional Obstacles to Clean Production
The Clean Production Movement is ultimately reliant on the successful scaleup of new technological innovations that can replace our toxic industrial infrastructure with cleaner and more just forms of production. The rapid advancement of clean production technology is also vital to mitigating the climate crisis. But to prevent this green transformation from occurring, the polluter industrial complex channels enormous sums of money into the campaigns of political candidates aligned with neoliberal policies designed to prevent/rollback climate and environmental initiatives from coming to fruition. Most of this money is lavished on the anti-environmental politicians by the polluter-industrial complex. Now in the beginnings of President Trump’s second administration, whose campaign had ushered in $208.5 million from big oil, we see the rapid dismantling of federal environmental and social justice research and grant programs, as well as the massive layoffs of federal employees in all major environmental agencies.
President Trump is launching an all-out attack on any policies, organizations, academic institutions, and movements challenging the ecologically destructive pathways of economic growth. These actions are quickly unraveling former President Biden’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions, including his now terminated Justice40 initiative, which previously ensured that forty percent of climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing investments benefitted disadvantaged communities impacted by greater pollution burdens. In this relentless political battle where climate policy can be scrapped by the federal government with each change in administration, we need a new strategy. We need to back environmental reforms carried out by local institutions, smaller communities, cities, and states if we are to make progress towards a just transition to a green economy over the next four years.
Defensive Climate Strategies
Under President Trump’s second administration, America’s fossil fuel infrastructure is being expanded. In this context, the American economy cannot be reformed by relying on federal policies and grants that are no longer forthcoming. Over the next four years, climate justice activists must come together to build a new kind of movement – one that links issues of economic justice (like inflation), human health (like toxic trespass), and climate change (like increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters) – into a larger project of social transformation and a just transition. This movement would address the root causes of both the climate and toxics crisis by building a common agenda. This is the focus of our work here at the Global Center for Climate Justice.
It is still imperative to defend existing environmental and climate-friendly programs and policies against the assault posed by the Trump administration and the polluter-industrial complex. Avoiding the worst-case scenarios of climate change is dependent on immediate reforms of the industries driving climate change and toxic chemicals production. But this is not enough.
The movement needs to stop just playing defense and go on the offensive by building the foundations of clean production.
The work of Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance (EJHA) is informative in this regard.
Amongst the federal regulatory rollbacks and layoffs of government workers, enforcing stronger local and state regulations can still provide a pathway forward for activists wanting to protect the health of humans and the environment. Enacting strong state-based legislation against pollution and GHG emissions may aid in inhibiting the prolongation of toxic fossil fuel infrastructure. Forming new interstate coalitions can also serve this purpose. The adoption of low-carbon procurement policies can also incentivise decarbonization, such as in the cement industry. States can additionally strengthen their authority against federal actions by incorporating green amendments, or environmental rights amendments, into their constitutions. As of 2025, many states like Montana, New York, and Pennsylvania have already made such modifications to their constitutions.
Additionally, state-based institutions like that of Massachusetts's Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), which works with businesses, governmental agencies, local communities, and international organizations to invent safer alternatives to existing toxic chemicals, can aid in a transition to clean manufacturing. For example, the use of the carcinogen trichloroethylene (TCE) in Massachusetts dropped from approximately 4.7 million pounds to 0.2 million pounds between 1990 and 2020 through TURI’s efforts. TURI is not short of success stories, including their cooperative efforts with major aerospace defense companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon to replace the carcinogen hexavalent chromium with safer alternatives.
As federal grants and environmental funding are rescinded, it is vital for cities, state, academic institutions, and climate-friendly technology companies to look towards alternative sources of funding to continue researching and developing non-toxic alternatives. One mechanism at attaining alternative funding is through the use and establishments of green banks, which function by offering loans to technically viable projects to accelerate the expansion of clean energy and sustainability.
Funds for green banks typically come from non-governmental or public organizations, local governments, and private investors. The majority of states in the United States have established green banks or are exploring the potential to establish them, even in fossil fuel and petrochemical dominated states like Texas and Alaska. With the loss of grants from federal institutions like the Department of Energy, alternative funding operations, like that of green banks, may extend a funding lifeline for the expansion of clean technologies that can replace the existing fossil fuel infrastructure.
Rapid Decarbonization of the Economy is Possible
Just like how technological advancements have paved a path for the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, progress in new alternative technology is opening up a road for detoxification and decarbonization of the cement industry. Sublime Systems, a startup based in Somerville, Massachusetts, is a prime example of climate-conscious infrastructural reform. Sublime Systems is working to create decarbonized cement by utilizing an electrochemical production process that leverages renewable energy to replace traditional cement, avoiding GHG emissions while also vastly limiting the output of hazardous air pollutants.
A life cycle assessment of Sublime Cement done by Climate Earth validated a ninety percent or greater reduction of cement’s warming potential with Sublime’s decarbonized cement, which performs equally as well or even better than OPC in strength, durability, slump retention, set time, and safety.
Sublime’s current pilot plant in Somerville, MA produces 250 tons of cement per year, and the company is building their first commercial kiloton plant in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which is set to run by 2027. Much of Sublime’s funding had initially come from the United States Department of Energy, including an $87 million grant executed under former President Biden, which was later terminated under the Trump administration. Beyond their struggle against such exorbitant funding loss, however, Sublime Systems has still managed to garner immense support from industry partners, including a combined $75 million in investments from global cement manufacturers Holcim and CRH in 2024; an advanced transaction from Microsoft for 623,000 tons (equivalent to 31 NFL football stadiums) of Sublime Cement in May 2025; and the establishment of a Distribution Channel Partner program with general contractors representing over $60 billion in annual revenues in June 2025. There is not only the potential, but also industry desire, for the cement industry to be decarbonized and detoxified.
All of this is to show that rapid change of our industrial economy is possible. Mitigating the climate crisis is a daunting task, but bolstering technological innovations to replace our existing toxic fossil-fuel infrastructure is necessary and already happening within many key economic industries. As activists, we need to do all that we can to accelerate the transition to cleaner, low-emissions production. This is a clear-cut step for building a more transformative environmental politics and effective movement for climate justice and clean production.
Disclosure:
This researched opinion piece was written by Kelly Lem. She was previously employed as a co-op/intern at Sublime Systems before writing this publication for the Center. All details regarding Sublime Systems are sourced from publicly accessible online information. The author would like to thank Dr. Daniel Faber and Christina Schlegel of the Global Center for Climate Justice for their editing and research assistance. These opinions are the author’s own.
