Why Can We Make Anything from Lignin Except Money? Towards a Broader Economic Perspective in Lignin Research

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: As a major component of wood, lignin is regarded as a promising, bio-based compound which could strongly influence the forest-based circular bioeconomy. Much research has been conducted on the material use of lignin, but the lignin commercialization process is still under development; few commercial production facilities and larger-scale applications are available. Therefore, we present a review of recent research papers on the economic perspectives on lignin. RECENT FINDINGS: Research has been conducted on lignin application areas such as lignin-derived polymeric materials, polymer and composite systems, applications for microsized and nanosized lignin, energy storage, and renewable chemicals. On the whole, the life cycle assessment results indicate that lignin-based innovations can be environmentally beneficial. Techno-economic studies identified the lignin feedstock cost and the achievable product price as the most sensitive factors. Recently, researchers pointed out information asymmetries between different stakeholder groups concerning lignin-containing products. Although most of the relevant papers presented a technical perspective of lignin, a smaller set of general economic statements about lignin appear in these papers. These statements refer to lignin underutilization, limited markets, resource abundancy, and barriers to utilization. The literature on technical lignin with an economic perspective can be divided into two different streams: several techno-economic papers and fewer socio-economic papers. The former placed a primary focus on production processes from a profit maximization perspective, but attempts were also made in the latter to explain the socio-technical innovation system. To date, lignin researchers have focused mainly on internal (direct) factors but have not yet sufficiently considered external (indirect) factors.