CIEX 2026 · Booth 3Executive summary · companion to CIEX 2026

Predicting the next technological breakthrough before the market sees it coming.

Fourteen competing routes to low-carbon ethylene, measured on how fast each is actually improving, and what that means for where the next R&D dollar goes.

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Evidence base

8,047 global patent families

Method

Improvement rates from global patent citation structure

Decision horizon

Industrial scale by 2035 · global

The answer, in three positions

The frontier

Electrochemical CO₂/CO

Fund43.6%/yrTRL 5

The fastest-improving route in the set, more than twice any classical route, and already out of the laboratory. It drew 239 new organisations in 2020 or later, more than the rest of the field combined. The only route in the fund quadrant: mature enough to be real, and still compounding fastest.

The standard

Classical cracking, in all its forms

Phase out13.0–19.8%/yr

Conventional cracking improves at 13.0%/yr, catalytic at 15.4%, electrified at 19.8%. All sit in the phase-out quadrant: established, and improving more slowly than the routes coming for them. Electrifying the furnace changes the heat source, not the improvement trajectory.

The asset question

A new cracker of any kind

30–50 yr assetSanctioning decision

A new classical cracker needs decades to depreciate. On these rates, the new routes take over well inside that window. That is the judgement a sanctioning decision now has to survive, and nothing in a stage-gate review surfaces it.

Verdicts across fourteen routes

10/14

routes in phase-out

Ten of fourteen routes sit in phase-out: including every classical cracking route.

Phase out · 10

Fund · 1Monitor closely · 1Phase out · 10Ignore · 2

Findings

Five conclusions for the next portfolio review.

13.0%

Last of fourteen

The technology the industry runs on is the slowest-improving route in its own competitive set. Not failing: operating near its thermodynamic limits, which is what maturity looks like. It cannot compound its way out of a carbon constraint.

35.0%

vs 15.7% incumbent

The fastest compounding is happening in a different discipline from the one most producers own. The CO₂ routes advance on electrochemistry and CO₂ handling, a different skill base, hiring pool and partner set from steam-cracking process engineering. Capability, not capital, is the binding constraint.

20.9%

Ceiling on deployable routes

Everything ready to build today improves more slowly than everything that is not. Every route above 23%/yr sits at TRL 4–6. Stage-gating on readiness concentrates capital in the slower half of the domain, and nobody reviews that as a strategy, because it is a consequence of the gate, not a decision.

7 of 14

Routes led by one competitor

Capability is consolidating faster than the technology is. One organisation is the apparent technical leader in half the routes; Chinese organisations lead nine of fourteen. Breadth across every carbon strategy does not require predicting the winner, only being present when one emerges.

1.9 yr

Frontier doubling time

The frontier improves roughly three times faster than a planning cycle can see. The fastest route doubles every 1.9 years against the incumbent's 5.7. A five-year plan spans about 2.6 doublings of the frontier, and any slower review rhythm discovers inflections after they have happened.

What this decides, and what it leaves to you. These are current positions on external technology evidence, not capital commitments. Plant economics, power price, feedstock cost, policy and asset fit are separate filters, and they belong to you.

The system

Ethylene is the example. The system is the product.

The capability behind this report runs continuously across an entire R&D portfolio: a baseline of where every contested route stands, living radars that keep positions current, and trigger alerts when a defined signal fires. First radar in weeks · monthly movement summaries · quarterly executive review.

Where in your next portfolio review are several technical routes competing for capital, without a shared external trajectory, or an agreed trigger for action?

Predicting the next technological breakthrough before the market sees it coming.

Five conclusions for the next portfolio review.

Ethylene is the example. The system is the product.

Come argue with the data at Booth 3.