CIEX 2026: fourteen routes to low-carbon ethylene

On the CIEX stage, Jard van Ingen presented Predicting the next breakthrough before the market sees it coming. The talk measured fourteen competing routes to low-carbon ethylene on one thing: how fast each is improving, read from the citation structure of 8,047 global patent families.

The fastest-improving route is electrochemical CO₂/CO at 43.6% a year. It is already out of the laboratory, and it drew 239 new organisations in 2020 or later, more than the rest of the field combined. Classical cracking improves at 13.0% a year, catalytic cracking at 15.4% and electrified cracking at 19.8%. Electrifying the furnace changes the heat source, not the improvement trajectory.

A new cracker of any kind needs decades to depreciate, and on these rates the new routes take over well inside that window. Watch the recording, or read the full reasoning in the CIEX executive summary.