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.

Here the authors report a kilowatt-scale, alkali-cation-free CO₂ electrolysis system using high-diffusion-flux gas diffusion electrodes, achieving over 1000 h of stability for efficient CO or C₂H₂ production at industrially relevant current densities.

Electrochemical CO₂ conversion holds promise for producing fuels and chemicals, yet faces hurdles in scaling to industrial levels. In this Perspective, drawing lessons from photovoltaics, the authors discuss measures to help transition the technology from the laboratory to large-scale deployment.

Effective carbon capture requires rapid gas transport to active sites, challenging to achieve without permanent porosity. Here, the authors report the development of hydrophobic organic crystals that undergo phase transition on exposure to carbon dioxide, allowing efficient carbon capture.

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.

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.