Since 2008 the European Parliament and the European Commission have had the goal of capturing 20% of Europe’s CO2 emissions and sequestering them underground. Since then, scientists at several institutions have been working on ways to use CO2 as a raw material.
Now, researchers at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany have found a way to turn CO2 into an alcohol, the first step in making it available for the chemical industry to employ it in fuels or pharmaceuticals. While the process still results in more waste than researchers would like, they’ve made the crucial first step in developing a process usable on an industrial scale.