Traditional chemical engineering skills will help towards achieving sustainability. But this does not mean simply doing more efficiently what has led to success in the past.

The birth and history of chemical engineering is so closely associated with the history of the industrial age and its surviving bureaucratic organisational forms that the profession is best thought of as co-evolved.
It is not surprising that we are earmarked as specialists and often stereotyped into roles and contributions accordingly. Our skills and training are acquired via formalised, specialised education, and often via specialised experience in particular industries.
We are often selected for roles on the basis of functional and industry specialisation. Our formal training prepares us to make a primarily reductionist, deductive and deterministic contribution. For the most part our role has been to combine and adapt existing individual unit operations to suit the technical purposes of market driven corporations. In an industrial age this has been the 'place' of the profession, as strengthened by its own successes.
As an example of this success, the role of the extractive metallurgist was increasingly supplanted by chemical engineering in the late 20th century. In part this was because the metallurgical profession was already specialised into a smaller subset of the chemical processing industries, and because it attempted to specialise even further, into separate mineral processing, hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy emphases. The more broadly based chemical engineering profession presented more options for the participation of individuals in industry, and greater potential for solving broadly defined problems. So in the industrial age chemical engineering has avoided the main dangers of being too specialised - a good starting point. However, with the focus of industry in the early 21st century swinging towards sustainable development we must heed the words of former Hewlett-Packard ceo Lew Platt: "Whatever made you successful in the past, won't in the future."
Which is not to say that we shouldn't build on our strengths - just that some of the things that have made us strong can contribute weaknesses in a new context.
There is no reason to expect that the drive to specialisation that has been the backbone of self-organising societies since the dawn of civilisation will cease. However, for an existing profession there is the need to adapt to meet new needs if the profession itself is to be sustainable. In the 21st century, greater individual specialisation means a greater emphasis on networking for problem solving. We move from a strong emphasis on complexity arising from deterministic simplicity (synthesis of unit operations approach) to include a greater emphasis on: simplicity arising from probabilistic complexity and diversity of influence; better model of behaviour, next generation operations; inclusive, constructivist, emergent solutions; inductive 'transfers' to/from collaborators; as much emphasis on 'pathfinding' as destinations; scenario based: uncertainly is no excuse.
So what does this mean for the chemical engineering profession? We will need to participate in society in more creative ways, in the types and focus of the innovations that we contribute, in the rate at which we can innovate, and in the means by which those innovations are generated. Our contribution has shifted more to that of options provision than problem solving, since the more important problems are not ours alone to solve. We must be specialised, but bring a broader view via networks. We can continue to be self interested, but recognise that the interests of others affect what our interests are in ways that by ourselves we cannot understand. Our context is now set by markets and governments and informed by NGOs and the public.
We can expect that the organisations that seek our services will evolve gatekeeping systems that demand greater networking ability and tolerance for ambiguity. Consultants and technology developers in services firms and advisory organisations will dominate our ranks rather than direct employees of individual chemical producing firms.
We face some major challenges on the path to sustainability. Developing scenarios call for seemingly contradictory paths to be pursued simultaneously, for example hydrogen from fossil fuels and the development of renewables technology are both 'right' for greenhouse gas abatement.
Shared understanding of this type of ambiguity is essential for pathfinding; and there are many paths to be found:
v Clean water for all, land and
water for irrigation without salination/desertification, fertilisation without eutrophication.
v Recycling and biodegradation of plastics and paper.
v Resource extraction without waste piles.
We are already seeing the influence of the new forces at work on our profession. Leading educational and research institutions, such as Oxford University, have introduced sustainable development priorities in chemical engineering education, focusing on hydrogen as fuel, emissions reduction, sequestration, photovoltaics, and life cycle analysis. An initiative of the World Resources Institute is the 'Beyond Grey Pinstripes' ranking system for postgraduate business education, emphasising sustainable development. The leading proponent appears to be the University of Michigan's Sustainable Development MBA.
We have probably not gone far enough in preparing engineers for the environment that they will be working in, which includes the post industrial social environment. The dilemma for undergraduate teaching is how to provide a thorough specialist engineering education, as continues to be needed, while also preparing engineers to make innovative contributions to emergent outcomes in networks. The aim is to prevent specialisation from becoming demarcation and social marginalisation.
We can and should start out the way in which we wish to finish. Sustainability should be an objective of all professions. The social sciences and business schools have already developed systems for dealing with non-deterministic, emergent behaviours in complex, dynamic and human systems.
Networking with these schools in cross functional syndicates via case studies and project work having sustainability objectives will provide both specialist training and skills in obtaining emergent outcomes.
As a profession, we must celebrate approaches that result in emergent outcomes (rather than just outcomes). It is certainly not the case that chemical engineering is so lacking in diversity of approach that there will be no present examples to choose from.
Because perceptions are reality these symbols are important to the attraction and leadership of people having the skills we need. To the extent that our profession influences primary and secondary education we can continue to reinforce that we value skills in physical sciences but be sure to point out that these will not be sufficient. For real success we prefer that these skills be accompanied by breadth, as indicated by other creative and co-operative activities.
In the final analysis the choice for us as a profession is the one that has always been there - between providing merely a useful set of skills or also contributing to the leadership and decision making of the societies in which we operate.
Our contribution along traditional lines is continuing, with improvements in many measures of success. These results suggest an energetic and skilful profession whose services will be needed in meeting the challenge of sustainability. There are also signs that we have recognised the need for change, and we are responding to the new forces at work.
But have today's practising engineers absorbed the meaning of sustainability to the point that they can offer leadership? Will next year's new graduates be better prepared for the challenge? To me, a sustainable future for chemical engineering as an identifiable and energetic profession built on traditional strengths and recognising new challenges seems reasonable ... but not quite.

Dr Robin Batterham is Chief Scientist of Australia and Chief Technologist with Rio Tinto Limited.