Carbon capture and storage articles from across Nature Portfolio

Electron spins are often not considered in electrocatalysis, yet they can play a pivotal role in determining reaction pathways. New research suggests that chiral (twisted) copper can generate spin-polarized charge carriers during CO₂ electroreduction and suppress undesired hydrogen evolution.

Monoclinic hafnia stabilizes atomically dispersed indium, creating active interfacial sites to advance selective CO₂ conversion to methanol.

Decarbonizing oil refining is essential to meeting climate targets. Here the authors develop a plant-level low-carbon pathway model to reveal heterogeneous decarbonization pathways across oil refineries and to quantify the associated emissions reduction potential and mitigation costs.

Electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction is often hindered by the competing hydrogen evolution reaction, reducing selectivity for the desired products. Here the authors demonstrate that helical chiral copper electrodes can suppress hydrogen evolution by generating spin-polarized carriers through the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect.

The applicability of hybrid molecular dynamics-Monte Carlo (MDMC) methods to study nanoconfined fluids is limited by their lack of generality beyond the training conditions. Here, the authors present an AI-assisted MDMC framework that overcomes this limitation by learning local, conditional transition statistics directly from MD trajectories, demonstrating its accuracy and transferability across different thermodynamic conditions, spatial scales, and complex nano-scale geometries.

Electrochemically mediated CO₂ capture typically makes use of sorbents that must be reduced before binding CO₂, a process often hampered by competitive oxygen reduction reactions. Here the authors develop N-heterocyclic imines that capture CO₂ in the neutral state and release it with near-theoretical Faradaic efficiency upon electro-oxidation, avoiding the competing reaction.

Stabilizing metal oxides is a prerequisite for efficient electrochemical CO2 reduction. Here, the authors report a La2O3-socketed δ-Bi2O3 heterojunction that impedes Bi2O3 reduction to metallic Bi, achieving high-efficiency formate production in industrial-level electrolyzers.

Electron spins are often not considered in electrocatalysis, yet they can play a pivotal role in determining reaction pathways. New research suggests that chiral (twisted) copper can generate spin-polarized charge carriers during CO₂ electroreduction and suppress undesired hydrogen evolution.

Monoclinic hafnia stabilizes atomically dispersed indium, creating active interfacial sites to advance selective CO₂ conversion to methanol.

Carbon dioxide mineralization transforms carbon dioxide into stable solids, offering a route to durable carbon storage. Scaling this technology will require clarifying the mechanisms behind key reaction bottlenecks and translating those insights into cost-effective materials design and robust process engineering.

Converting CO₂ into solid carbon materials provides both long-term carbon sequestration and the production of value-added products. This Comment compares reactor configurations guided by thermodynamic analysis, evaluates the market volume and morphology control of different carbon products, and identifies hurdles and opportunities for scaled-up deployment.

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.