2024 Essay Competition

The call for the 2024 Essay Competition

Launched in 2023, the competition aims to highlight the roles of the chemical sciences in promoting sustainability and to encourage young people to explore the relevance of scientific approaches to tackling sustainability challenges. In essence, it provides them a special opportunity to present their perspectives. The theme of the 2024 Essay Competition was

How can the chemical sciences contribute to ‘decarbonizing’ the energy sector and to eliminating the generation or release of greenhouse gasses from large-scale manufacturing and agricultural processes?

The competition was open to entrants who were aged under 35 on 31 March 2024. Valid entries from applicants of 32 different nationalities were received by the closing date with entrants' age ranging from 15 to 34. The essays were assessed by a global team of volunteer evaluators, who selected 24 essays as Finalists based on their relevance and quality. From within this group, essays that were very highly rated were chosen as Regional Winners, with regions being defined according to the World Bank geographic classification.

The results are presented below. Overall, these essays from around the world provide an encouraging snapshot of the shifts that are underway in the field of chemistry and how it is perceived by young people studying, researching and working in the field. The knowledge-creating and utility-producing aspects of the discipline that have traditionally been seen as its key functions are increasingly being joined by an emergent new responsibility for chemistry practitioners that is understood to be urgent and of paramount importance. This responsibility is to help detect, avoid, minimise and counter harmful impacts on the climate that result from humankind’s continually releasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, as well as to advocate the use of carbon-free energy sources and the development of new processes to capture CO₂. These young voices show a heightened awareness of the importance of chemistry professionals entering the wider societal and policy debates, recognising that good technologies need to be attractive economically, politically and socially in order to be implemented.

IOCD is extremely grateful to the Royal Society of Chemistry for its sponsorship, which helps to cover the costs of operating the competition during its first five years, and for its participation in the competition process and publication of the Regional Winner essays. We are also highly indebted to the dozens of volunteer evaluators from around the world who agreed to assist us in reviewing the entries and selecting the Finalists and Winners. Most of all, we are grateful to the young people from across the continents who made the effort to write fascinating essays and to submit them for our scrutiny.

Regional Winners of the 2024 IOCD Essay Competition

The Regional Winners of the 2024 IOCD Essay Competition, Young Voices in the Chemical Sciences for Sustainability (with links to the published essays at RSC Sustainability) were:

East Asia and Pacific: Amanda Tolentino
Towards a net-zero future: the chemical sciences across technology, education, and policy (available here)
Europe and Central Asia: Alexandre Jorge
Chemical sciences: the key to a carbon-neutral future (available here)
Latin America and the Caribbean: Tales da Silva Daitx
Chemical advances in transforming pollutants into new materials (available here)
Middle East and North Africa: Yana Walia
From lab to landscape: the role of chemical sciences in sustainable technology (available here)
North America: Govind Nanda
Atoms and photons — how chemical sciences can catalyze the development of sustainable solutions powered by light (available here)
South Asia: Sarah Geo
Chemical innovations in nuclear energy: paving the way for a carbon-neutral future (available here)
Sub-Saharan Africa: Faith Mwende Johnson)
Utilizing advancements in chemical sciences for decarbonization: a pathway to sustainable emission and energy reduction (available here)

Each regional Winner received a cash prize of US$ 500 and a Winner’s Certificate.

In an Editorial in the same issue of RSC Sustainability, IOCD’s Competition Organisers present an overview of the results and the topics covered by these Regional Winners:

S.A. Matlin, F. Rosei, P. Lambin and Lei Jin. The role of the chemical sciences in ‘decarbonizing’ the conversion of energy and industrial and agricultural emissions. RSC Sustainability 2024, 2, 3566-3569 (available here).

Other Finalists of the 2024 IOCD Essay Competition

The 17 additional essays that were selected as Finalists in the 2024 competition were published by IOCD in a Compendium:

S.A. Matlin, F. Rosei, P. Lambin and Lei Jin. (eds.). Decarbonizing energy conversion and eliminating the generation or release of greenhouse gasses from large-scale manufacturing and agricultural processes. Regional winner and finalist essays in the IOCD Essay Competition, Young Voices in the Chemical Sciences for Sustainability 2024, International Organization for Chemical Sciences in Development, Namur, November 2024.
Available to download here.

Finalists:

Aishat Braimah: Solar energy, the silicon market, and the need to revise the manufacture of minerals
Leia Gilceava: Chemistry’s bold solutions for a shining planet
Olivia Agatha Hall: Can the chemical sciences improve photovoltaic panels to meet global energy demands?
Jyothi Jangir: Decarbonize and Energize: How Chemistry Saves Planet
Rishabh Kundu: Chemical sciences unleashed: decarbonizing the giants of manufacturing
Elena Montejano-Nares: Transformation of main greenhouse gases into value-added products to preserve life on Earth
Giovanna Li Petri: Decarbonizing the future: leveraging chemistry to combat GHGs emissions
Pamela Eyre Victoria Lira: Chemical sciences for decarbonizing agricultural emissions through sustainable manure management
Novina Malviya: Climate change a hidden virus: could green hydrogen circular economy be a solution
Sivuyisiwe Mapukata: The Earth’s rapid demise- There is no planet B
Shibghatullah Muhammady: Chemical sciences for future zero-carbon energy and zero-greenhouse gas in large-scale
Galahad Eoghain O’Rourke: A planetary battle against climate crisis: myth or a chemical journey towards sustainability?
Saibalendu Sarkar: Chemical sciences: a par excellence practice for decarbonization
Gunjan Sharma: GHG emissions: confront, cut, and conquer for a sustainable future as there is no planet B
Helen Vjestica: Zeolites to the rescue: how green chemistry can capture carbon and power a sustainable future
Zheng Yi Yan: Stalling climate change: reducing greenhouse gas emissions from energy production, agriculture and manufacturing
Justin Zhang: Why 100% renewables does not mean carbon neutral