CO2 as Fuel? Catalyst Discovery Turns Emissions into Opportunity

Methanol is a key starting material for a multitude of chemical products, including plastics and fuels. It is often described as “a universal precursor for the production of a wide range of chemicals and materials,” essentially “the Swiss army knife of chemistry,” as noted by Javier Pérez-Ramírez, Professor of Catalysis Engineering at ETH Zurich.

The liquid plays a key role in the transition to sustainable production of chemical products and fuels, but only if the energy used to produce hydrogen and drive catalysis is generated sustainably. In that case, methanol can ultimately be produced in a climate-neutral manner, providing an eco-friendly way to use carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere.

However, conventional methanol production is largely unsustainable, as the vast majority is produced from fossil fuels, resulting in high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

That may no longer be the case, as scientists from ETH Zurich have now developed a method to synthesize methanol that could form the basis of a fossil-free chemical industry. Published in Nature, the study¹ details how liquid alcohol can be produced from hydrogen and carbon dioxide using individual metal atoms as catalysts.

As scientists continue to explore ways to make chemical reactions more efficient using catalysts, this new method from ETH Zurich researchers could also enable more economical use of rare and expensive metals.

By placing isolated indium atoms on a support material, the researchers have developed a catalyst that can convert CO₂ and H₂ into methanol far more efficiently.

The Carbon Imbalance Creates Challenges & Opportunities

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a colorless, odorless, and non-toxic gas that plays a vital role in Earth’s natural systems. Plants use CO₂ during photosynthesis to produce energy-rich compounds and release oxygen as a byproduct. This process is essential for human survival. CO₂ also participates in the global carbon cycle, where carbon atoms continuously move between the atmosphere, Earth’s surface, and living organisms.

Despite its natural importance, CO₂ functions as a significant greenhouse gas. It traps heat from sunlight in the atmosphere, creating a warming effect that maintains temperatures suitable for life. Without any greenhouse gases, Earth would be too cold to inhabit. However, elevated concentrations intensify this warming, driving global warming and climate change.

Carbon cycles continuously through multiple reservoirs: rocks, sediments, the atmosphere, and living organisms. It re-enters the atmosphere through respiration, organism decay, volcanic eruptions, and fires. However, human activities now dominate this balance. Since industrialization began in the early 19th century, land development and fossil fuel combustion have generated carbon emissions far exceeding what natural sinks can absorb. As a result, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations have risen sharply and continue to accelerate.

Global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and industry reached 38.11 billion metric tons (GtCO₂) in 2025, increasing by more than 69% since 1990, according to data from Statista. China is the biggest contributor to these global GHG emissions, followed by the US.

Industrialization and rapid economic growth in recent decades led to an almost 450% increase in CO₂ emissions in the Asian country over the last three and a half decades, in contrast to a 6.1% decrease in the U.S., though the North American country remains the biggest carbon polluter in history.

The US-Israel war on Iran has generated approximately 5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in its first two weeks. While global CO₂ emissions continue to rise, land and ocean carbon sinks have weakened by about 15% over the past decade, according to the Global Carbon Project. Though it did find the land carbon sink, CO₂ emissions absorbed by plants and soils, to be recovering to its pre-El Niño strength after a couple of unusually weak years.

Meanwhile, a study published in Nature² found that the decline of carbon sinks has contributed about 8% to the rise in atmospheric CO₂ concentration since 1960. The absorption of carbon dioxide has also lowered the ocean’s pH by 0.1 units, increasing its acidity by 30%.

So, as human activities release more CO₂ into the atmosphere than natural processes can remove, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to increase and set new record highs, creating an urgent need to tackle the problem of CO₂ emissions.

One way to address this serious problem is through a renewable energy transition. While solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and biomass provide promising solutions, this transition is a slow, long-term process, facing high upfront capital costs, infrastructure needs, and technological challenges.

Other ways include adopting sustainable transport, enhancing energy efficiency, and removing existing carbon through reforestation and land management.

These are all promising solutions, but what if we could capture carbon dioxide directly from the environment and then use it as a raw material? What if we could turn this main greenhouse gas into a fuel? That would be a breakthrough in climate and energy technology, as it would not only help minimize global warming but also meet the world’s high energy demand.

Several studies have been exploring ways to convert CO₂ into fuel. This process is carbon-neutral because the fuels emit the same amount of CO₂ when burned. It involves capturing carbon dioxide and using renewable energy to convert it into hydrocarbon fuels such as methanol, diesel, and gasoline through chemical methods like catalytic hydrogenation or electrochemical reduction.

Methanol stands out as one of the most practical and scalable pathways for CO₂ utilization, thanks to its compatibility with existing infrastructure and versatility across industries.

Methanol (CH₃OH) is a colorless, flammable, and highly toxic alcohol released to the environment during industrial uses and naturally from microbes, vegetation, and volcanic gases. If ingested or absorbed, it poses significant health risks, including blindness, organ failure, or death.

The liquid chemical compound is used as antifreeze, an industrial solvent, and a chemical feedstock for plastics, paints, foams, resins, pharmaceutical products, and fuels. It also serves as an energy carrier for storing renewable electricity, an additive in conventional fuels, and an alternative liquid fuel. As a “cleaner” energy resource, methanol fuels buses, cars, trucks, ships, boilers, and fuel cells. It is also used to produce dimethyl ether (DME), another renewable fuel.

Despite its promise, scaling methanol production from CO₂ still faces challenges, including high energy requirements, hydrogen availability, and the need for cost-effective catalysts. Ongoing research is making rapid progress on these fronts.

Click here to learn how light can repurpose carbon dioxide.

Single-Atom Innovation Unlocks Efficient CO₂ Conversion

In order to produce methanol from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, researchers from ETH Zurich have made an advance in catalyst research.

Catalysts have been in use since ancient times. For instance, the yeast used to make bread contains natural catalysts (enzymes) that help convert flour into bread. Over time, advances in catalysts have led to biodegradable plastics, new pharmaceuticals, and environmentally safer fuels.

A catalyst is a substance that helps make reactions easier and more efficient. These “reaction helpers” accelerate a chemical reaction or lower the pressure or temperature needed to start one, without being consumed during the reaction itself.

Chemical reactions require energy to get started because bonds between atoms in molecules must be rearranged. The energy hurdle could be small, like striking a match, or much higher in industrial processes, which drives up costs. Catalysts help lower this barrier, with the most effective ones often containing metals, including rare and expensive ones.

The breakthrough by ETH Zurich chemists has led to the development of a catalyst that substantially lowers the minimum energy required to produce methanol from CO₂ and hydrogen. The researchers achieved an extremely efficient use of indium so that each indium atom serves as its own active site.

Unlike the past trial-and-error approach to catalysis research, the newly discovered catalyst allows for more precise analysis and understanding of the reactions occurring on its surface, thus paving the way for more optimized and rational catalyst design.

“Our new catalyst has a single atom architecture, in which isolated active metal atoms are anchored on the surface of a specially developed support material.”

– Pérez-Ramírez, the Director of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Catalysis

While the newly discovered catalyst is single-atom, traditional catalysts contain metals as aggregates. These particles are very small, but they usually contain hundreds to thousands of metal atoms. Many of these atoms do not even have any direct involvement in the reaction. But if these atoms can work at the individual level, they can be far more efficient as scientists can make better use of scarce and expensive chemical elements, thus allowing for economically viable use of precious metals.

Also, the catalytic properties of isolated atoms differ from aggregates.

“Indium has already been used in this catalyst for over a decade,” noted Pérez-Ramírez, who has been working on better catalysts for CO₂-based methanol production for more than a decade and a half and holds several patents in the field. “In our study, we show that isolated indium atoms on hafnium oxide allow more efficient CO₂-based methanol synthesis than indium in the form of nanoparticles containing large numbers of atoms.”

Indium (In) is a silvery-white metal whose supply is mainly dependent on the zinc mining industry, with indium being a small byproduct. China (40%) is the top producer of indium and controls the majority of the world’s indium reserves. The metal is used extensively in indium tin oxide films, alloys, and semiconductor materials required for PV cells, solders, flat panel displays, LEDs, thermal interface material, and batteries.

To place single indium atoms on the surface of hafnium oxide precisely, the team developed several new synthetic pathways. A key part of this work, done in collaboration with other research institutions, was designing the support material to provide a stable but reactive environment for the atoms.

One pathway involved combusting the starting materials in a flame at 2,000 to 3,000°C before cooling them rapidly. This keeps the indium on the surface and gets it firmly incorporated.

The embedding of catalyst atoms into heat-resistant hafnium oxide demonstrated that single-atom catalysts can withstand extreme conditions, including high temperatures and pressures. This durability is important because synthesising methanol from CO₂ and hydrogen gas requires temperatures as high as 300°C and pressures of about 50 times normal atmospheric pressure.

“Nanostructured indium-hafnium oxides synthesized via flame spray pyrolysis achieve up to 70% higher indium-specific methanol productivity than indium–zirconium oxides, with the largest gains observed for single atoms of indium,” stated the study.

Another benefit of isolated-atom catalysts is that scientists can analyze reaction mechanisms with far fewer interfering signals, thus providing clearer insights. Existing catalysts made of nanoparticles have been rather difficult to study. They have essentially been a black box. While reactions only occur at a small number of atoms on the surface, many measurement signals come from atoms inside the particles that weren’t involved in the reaction, making it harder to interpret what’s happening.

“The development of the methanol catalyst and the detailed analysis of the mechanism would not have been possible without this interdisciplinary expertise.”

– Pérez-Ramírez

Investing in Carbon Recycling

Celanese Corporation (CE ) is a global chemical and specialty materials company that produces engineered polymers. Its key business segments include Engineered Materials and the Acetyl Chain.

Notably, the company is directly involved in converting CO₂ into methanol. Through Fairway Methanol, a joint venture with Japan’s Mitsui & Co., Celanese is to capture about 180,000 tons of CO₂ annually and produce 130,000 tons of low-carbon methanol per year.

Recently, the company attained Carbon Footprint Certification (CFC) for its Hostaform and Celcon POM ECO-C grades at its Frankfurt and Texas production sites, as a result of Celanese’s investment in Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) technology to reduce fossil-based inputs without negatively impacting material performance.

With a market cap of $7 billion, Celanese shares are currently trading at $62.47, up 48% YTD. The company’s stocks have been experiencing a downtrend for the past two years after surpassing the $170 mark in early 2024, going down to about $35 late last year, and are now seeing renewed traction.

It has an EPS (TTM) of -10.40 and a P/E (TTM)-6.02. Celanese pays a dividend yield of 0.19%.

As for the company’s financials, it reported a 7% decrease in net sales to $9.5 billion for the full year 2025, due to a 4% decline in both price and volume. Its operating loss came in at $786 million, while GAAP diluted loss per share was $10.44, and adjusted earnings per share were $3.98.

Celanese reported lower-than-normal demand in key end-markets such as paints, coatings, automotive, and construction, but remained focused on increasing cash flow to improve costs, accelerate deleveraging, and drive top-line growth.

“Our full‑year performance demonstrates the strength of our action plans and disciplined execution in a challenging environment.”

– CEO Scott Richardson

In 2025, the company generated an operating cash flow of $1.1 billion and reported free cash flow of $773 million.

This cash flow generation, combined with over $120 million in cost reductions, completion of the Micromax divestiture, refinancing of near-term maturities, and introducing programs to drive growth and enrich the EM pipeline, helped the company make “considerable progress against our priorities of deleveraging, cost improvement, and top‑line growth,” said Richardson. For the last quarter, Celanese reported net sales of $2.2 billion, operating profit of $93 million, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.67.

As for the current quarter, the company expects little change in demand but anticipates modest seasonal improvements in volumes, thus expecting first-quarter adjusted earnings per share to be $0.70 to $0.85.

“We expect to have another strong year of cash generation with a targeted free cash flow of $650 to $750 million. Although the macro environment remains uncertain, we’ve created forward momentum. We believe the decisive actions we are taking position Celanese to meaningfully benefit from the eventual recovery.”

– Richardson

Latest Celanese Corporation (CE) Stock News and Developments

Conclusion

Turning carbon dioxide into fuel represents a significant opportunity to convert a climate challenge into an economic asset. And with innovations like single-atom catalysts dramatically improving efficiency, the pathway to producing methanol from CO₂ is becoming more viable than ever. But of course, scaling this solution will require abundant renewable energy, cost-effective hydrogen production, and supportive policy frameworks. Once all these factors align, CO₂ has the potential to shift from being one of the world’s greatest environmental challenges to one of its most important resources.

References

1. Zhang, X., Liu, Y., Wang, C., Li, J., Chen, Z., Zhao, H., Xu, L., Sun, K., Zhou, Q., Yang, F., Wu, T., Guo, S., Li, Y., Huang, J., Deng, D., Bao, X. & Li, C. Single atoms of indium enable efficient CO₂ hydrogenation to methanol. Nature Nanotechnology (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-026-02135-y
2. Friedlingstein, P., Le Quéré, C., O’Sullivan, M., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Luijkx, I.T., Li, H., van der Woude, A., Schwingshackl, C., Pongratz, J., Regnier, P., Andrew, R.M., Bakker, D.C.E., Canadell, J.G., Ciais, P., Gasser, T., Jones, M.W., Lan, X., Morgan, E., Olsen, A., Peters, G.P., Peters, W., Sitch, S. & Tian, H. Emerging climate impact on carbon sinks in a consolidated carbon budget. Nature 649, 98–103 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09802-5