The chemical industry is important for our modern economies, as its products are used as building blocks in other manufacturing sectors. At the same time, this industry sector has high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for 16% of global industrial direct CO2 emissions. The chemical industry is among the hard to abate sectors due to its heterogeneity of production processes, high GHG intensity, high trade sensitivity, and potentially high mitigation costs. Such factors provide hurdles against changes required for net-zero in the chemical industry. A special type of barrier that creates systemic inertia and resistance against deep emission reduction innovations is carbon lock-in that arises through a combination of systematic forces that perpetuate fossil fuel-based technologies exhibiting increasing returns over time.

The socio-technical dynamics of transition towards net-zero takes place through the interaction of barriers and enablers at the organization, cluster and sector levels. The interrelated barriers and enablers at the different levels coevolve and interact with each other. To escape the carbon lock-in, national policy measures need to be combined with interventions by firms, by cluster operators and by actors across the supply chain. It takes a collective effort to green Dutch industry.