Owing to the steady depletion of fossil resources and the environmental urgency to develop a carbon neutral chemical industry, there is a pressing need for new bio-based chemicals. In this realm, sugar derived building blocks (furans, levulinates,...) have shown great promise. However, these chemicals face limitations as their valorization mainly rely on thermally induced conversions. To achieve a sustainable diversification of the methodologies used to decorate furans, electro- and photo-chemical methods present a promising approach. They proceed through otherwise inaccessible cationic or radical intermediates  and new patterns of reactivity emerge. Innovations such as selfassembled monolayers, cation pool electrolysis, and photon-induced redox potential upgrading will be used to improve control over these reactive intermediates. Additionally leveraging these approaches with the integration of microreactor technology holds significant promise to achieve scalable methodologies.