“Demand-side innovation is the priority for decarbonising materials” is the Roadmap to Net Zero research from Prof Julian Allwood and FIBE3 Cohort 1 published in the June issue of Nature Reviews Material and accessible on https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-026-00934-2 It sets out a challenging but clear message: getting to net zero has to work within the real limits of what we actually have. Clean electricity, carbon storage, public money and political will are all finite. Hoping that new technology will quietly swap out today's polluting industries for cleaner ones is not a plan. It is a wish. And even if we push technology as hard as we can and get the public on board, it still will not be enough on its own. That’s why we have to think differently. It is precisely what drives the research, innovation and business models that the FIBE3 programme is built around.
Despite decades of climate pledges, steel, cement and other heavy industries are still pumping out more carbon than ever. Governments and businesses have been counting on supply-side technological substitution, such as carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and new production processes to step in and fill the gap. But these solutions are moving too slowly and require implausible growth in public finance, emissions-free electricity and carbon storage; resources that are already stretched thin.
So what can actually work? The research makes a clear case. Greater priority should be given to demand-side innovation: we need to change not just how materials are made, but how they are used, valued and governed. That means smarter design, cutting waste, and giving communities a genuine voice in decisions about how resources are used. When Prof Allwood and Cohort 1 modelled what a credible path to net zero looks like, approaches centred on using materials more wisely consistently outperformed technology-only solutions.
The gap between what today's climate policies promise and what they can realistically deliver is significant. When you add up all the public money, carbon storage and clean energy they depend on, the numbers simply do not stack up. Recycling steel and cement using clean electricity is the one scalable low-carbon solution available right now, but it cannot come close to replacing the volumes of material the world currently produces.
The conclusion is hard to argue with: we need to use less material. That is achievable through smarter design, less waste and making far better use of what we already have, and there are many commercially compelling opportunities to make better use of much less material. Credible material decarbonization depends on a strong and honest policy direction. We need to accelerate participatory change and actively reduce demand for primary material production. Demand-side innovation should no longer be treated as an optional add-on, it must become the central pillar of effective material climate policy. A lower-material future means a cleaner future.