Some put it to 50 years, and some expect petroleum reserves to last over 100 years.

As the world grapples with the looming reality of dwindling petroleum reserves, the scramble for sustainable alternatives is more urgent than ever. Even if the dependence on fertilizers and fuels for the transport of hydrocarbons may reduce, the chemical industry would continue to use petroleum products to synthesize basic raw materials. But is this activity sustainable?

How would future generations manage to synthesize all their needs from renewable resources? Alcohol, chlorine, vegetable oils, proteins derived from food grains, lignin, cellulose, Agro wastes, and pentoses would serve as primary raw materials. How far can we think of using these and producing plastics, pigments and dyes, chemicals for agriculture, pharmaceuticals, detergents, coatings, and other basic chemicals of day-to-day needs?

Scratch your heads and come out with research schemes that are futuristic enough. (Alcohol to butanol, alcohol to vinyl acetate, and ethylene oxide are known processes). There may be more starting from furfural, sugar, leading to monomers for polymers, polyols for soft and rigid foams and coatings.

Where can we go from here?