What’s at risk for the future of bioplastics under Project 2025?
With growing concerns about environmental sustainability and climate change, bioplastics offer an innovative and indispensable alternative to traditional plastics, which are known to be harmful. What’s at risk for the future of bioplastics under Project 2025?
You can also read: Bioplastics Market Trends and Forecasts to 2028.
Health-related issues, product degradability, and forecasted shortages of fossil resources are at the top of the concerns with fossil-fuel-derived plastics. Plastic products contain carcinogenic chemicals that can cause developmental, reproductive, neurological, and immune disorders. Plastics can take years to break down and decompose, increasing the likelihood of harmful chemical exposure. Additionally, 90% of the global greenhouse gas emissions from plastic products come from producing and converting fossil fuels into new plastic products. Natural fibers and polymers based on renewable resources, such as bio-based plastics, are described as a solution to many of these health, degradation, and environmental problems. Further, cleaner, sustainable plastics have enormous potential for job creation, economic strengthening, and international competitiveness. With worldwide efforts geared towards the shift to bioplastics underway, the eventual phase-out of non-biodegradable fossil-fuel-derived materials becomes inevitable.
Profitable industries and organizations already use bio-based polymer materials such as silk, soy protein, sodium alginate, and Polylactic Acid for clothing, well-performing biodiesel, building materials, and medical products. The research into and subsequent development of biobased polymer products and materials has been a global focus, with the United States recognized as a top contributor to research in the natural biopolymer field. However, recent policy and budgetary changes at the highest levels of U.S. government are complicating future contributions, making it “…more difficult for the U.S. to dominate those emerging industries in the future,” says Jackson Ewing, Director of Energy and Climate Policy at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute. To understand where bioplastics in the U.S. are heading next, we must understand both the foundational policies of yesterday and the Project 2025 changes today.
Clean air and pollution legislation and governmental programs and policies set the stage for emerging trends in the bioplastics market, trends that can provide job growth and health and environmental solutions. Administrations of the past have worked to manage the effects of climate change through legislative, executive, and judicial actions that target the production of traditional fossil-fuel-derived plastics and, instead, open doors to the production of bio-based chemicals and materials, including bio-based plastic alternatives. These foundational policies, outlined below, create a path for bioplastics research and development.
The Clean Air Act of 1963 was the first federal U.S. legislation established to research, monitor, and control air pollution.
The Clean Air Act of 1970 was an environmental law with bipartisan support from Congress (374-1). The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) was subsequently established and tasked to oversee the Act. There are significant health, environmental, and economic benefits of the Act; benefits including the innovation of environmentally friendly technologies such as bio-based plastics, and market formation in a growing global industry.
In 2009, the United States Department of Energy Loan Programs Office (U.S. DOE LPO) formed. The U.S. DOE LPO provides government-backed loans that finance large cleantech manufacturing projects, including manufacturing plants that make biobased plastic alternatives. In 2014, a Program designed to provide government-backed loans to fund the development, construction, and retrofitting of commercial-scale biobased product manufacturing facilities, expanded to include bio-based products. This loan program expansion was renamed the Biorefinery, Renewable Chemical, and Biobased Product Manufacturing Assistant Program.
The S. DOE LPO has made a significantly positive impact on clean energy, advanced technology, and job creation as of Q4, FY 2024. By the end of Biden’s first term, and in preparation for the upcoming Trump presidency, the U.S. DOE LPO had increased the pace of loan processing and quadrupled the amount of money available for projects afforded under Biden’s economic legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. These additional funds went to support businesses and organizations invested in clean energy. 2020 to 2024 were the most productive in the LPO’s history, with hundreds of billions of dollars allocated to clean energy projects.
Climate and job impact statistics, end of Q4, FY 2024. Courtesy of: U.S. Department of Energy.
Despite the known negative health and environmental impacts, the Trump administration has expressed a disdain for sustainability concerns. Past administrations’ progress is turning upside down, with Trump’s Project 2025 platform in full effect. The policies, platforms, and actions of Project 2025, described below, are deregulatory in nature and fossil-fuel-focused by design.
In January 2025, the U.S. EPA Administrator removed its Science Advisors from the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. The advisory board was tasked with providing science-based expert data and information and creating and issuing environmental regulations. The Committee ensures that independent research has more weight than political or industry agendas in shaping its policies. U.S. EPA advisory panels and their replacements are both a requirement of federal law.
(Eo) 14154, Unleashing American Energy – January 28, 2025, EO 14154, together with three other EOs, conveys the Administration’s energy policy. The premise of these EOs is to (1) encourage the rapid development of fossil fuel resources and all associated infrastructure, (2) to remove regulatory obstacles, and (3) to reverse federal actions on climate change and energy efficiency.
Former oil company Liberty Energy Founder and CEO and now-head of the U.S. DOE, Chris Wright, emphasizes the push to fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal, and oil in his keynote remarks at CERAweek by S&P Global on March 10, 2025. While at Liberty Energy, Wright writes in a January 2024 letter that the thought that government policies must support fighting climate change and renewable energy projects a “destructive misunderstanding.” In this same letter, Wright states that “…transitioning our global energy system to cheaper, cleaner, greener energy sources…,” is, “…based on a combination of climate change exaggerations.”
The private sector has responded in turn. In late November, Coca-Cola, the world’s top plastic polluter, dropped a 2022 pledge to achieve 25% reusable packaging by 2030. Morgan Stanley dropped a 2030 goal to facilitate fifty million metric tons of overall plastic pollution prevention or reduction.
Weak regional alliances reduce access to affordable materials, and they also undermine supply-chain strength, adaptability, and resilience across sectors.
In contrast, strong regional alliances play a critical role in supporting bioplastics as viable market products and industry-wide alternatives.
Additionally, ongoing shifts in trade policies complicate future forecasting, especially under an administration enacting rapid, eliminatory policy changes.
We also recognize that many executive orders issued so far could trigger legal disputes or constitutional challenges in the courts.
Barriers (black) and enablers (blue) of transitioning from a linear to a circular plastics system. Courtesy of Carbon Recycling of High Value Bioplastics: A Route to a Zero-Waste Future.
Meanwhile, international pressure continues to support the development of sustainable alternatives to fossil-based plastics through research and innovation.
As deregulation affects the U.S. EPA and DOE, and scientific staff are removed, pollution levels may rise and standards weaken.
Such deregulation risks reshaping the nation’s environmental policies and could leave the U.S. trailing behind global bio-based market growth.
The full consequences of these policy shifts remain unclear, but they will likely have long-term environmental and industrial implications.
During this uncertainty, international advancements in circular economy, upcycling, and renewable bioplastics are expected to progress outside U.S. borders.
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