Carbon capture and storage articles from across Nature Portfolio

In 2025, water electrolysis for green hydrogen production continued to progress towards gigawatt-scale deployment worldwide, whereas CO₂ electrolysis for carbon-based fuels and chemicals synthesis saw advances at the cell and catalyst levels and moved towards pilot-scale demonstrations. Although at different stages of technical readiness, the two fields share common future challenges.

Pan et al. report an N-Ni/NiCo@C catalyst for solar-driven photothermal methane dry reforming. Its designed structure enables a lattice oxygen-free reaction mechanism, achieving high efficiency and stability.

Fifty years after it was commercialized, global carbon capture and storage (CCS) capacity is equal to 0.09% of global emissions. Meanwhile, global emission-free electricity generation grows at a steady, linear rate. This Perspective argues that it is now too late for CCS or hydrogen to make a substantial contribution by 2050, so other solutions are required to decarbonize industry.

Understanding how alkali doping promotes CO₂ electroreduction is challenging, as tracking proton transfer is difficult. Here, the authors report operando nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy reveals Li doping promotes a proton–electron relay from water, thereby boosting CO₂-to-formate conversion.

Metal-cation-free CO₂ electroreduction in strong acid minimizes reactant loss and salt precipitation yet struggles with CO₂ activation and hydrogen evolution competition. Here, the authors report bioinspired sharp gold triangles with a proton-blocking layer that polarize CO₂ and suppress hydrogen evolution.

Electrochemical conversion of CO₂ and nitrite offers a green route to produce urea. Here, the authors report co-sputtered copper cobalt catalysts enable efficient C–N coupling through a tandem mechanism, yielding 61 mmol h^⁻1gcat^⁻1 urea at –1.2 V vs. RHE.

We celebrate 1 year of Nature Reviews Clean Technology with a series of Year in Reviews and a collection that highlights articles from the past year. Here we look back at our first year and look forward to 2026.

In 2025, water electrolysis for green hydrogen production continued to progress towards gigawatt-scale deployment worldwide, whereas CO₂ electrolysis for carbon-based fuels and chemicals synthesis saw advances at the cell and catalyst levels and moved towards pilot-scale demonstrations. Although at different stages of technical readiness, the two fields share common future challenges.

Reducing energy consumption is a key priority in carbon capture and release. Now, a thermally responsive pH-swing mediator for CO₂ capture is presented that operates at an impressively low regeneration temperature of 60 °C, making it compatible with a solar-driven capture–release cycle.

The co-production of carbon nanotubes and hydrogen from methane is achieved by recycling process gas in a continuous flow reactor. Developed from a single-pass reactor for carbon nanotube production, the multi-pass reactor offers efficiency improvements and the net production of hydrogen as an output value stream.

Electrochemically induced pH swing can facilitate direct air capture at ambient temperature; however, the energy efficiency is compromised by the oxidation of the redox-active organic molecules. A hybrid flow cell that spatially isolates the oxygen-sensitive materials from air achieves stable CO₂ capture from oxygen-containing gas streams with low energy demand.