POWER– CO₂ Project

Driving CO₂ conversion into e-fuels, e-fuel, and e-chemicals beyond the current state of the art

Project coordinated by CNRS

Duration of 5 years

7,3 millions euros of budget

Organization of 7 PhD projects, 8 postdoctoral positions, 2 conferences, and 2 thematic workshops

Context and challenges

While the use of carbon-based sources—oil, gas, and coal—has enabled the rapid development of our current society, it has underpinned a linear carbon economy in which human activities rely on carbon extracted from the subsurface and accumulated in the atmosphere. Moving towards climate neutrality requires the development of a circular carbon economy for economic sectors where carbon will remain a key element, such as long-distance transport (carbon-based liquid fuels) and the chemical industry.

Synthetic fuels, for example (e-fuels derived from electricity and solar fuels derived from sunlight), offer a promising alternative to fossil fuels as they have the highest energy density of all storage devices, can be stored over long periods, and can leverage existing infrastructure for storage, distribution, and use. While current CO₂ conversion technologies recycle less than 1% of human-related emissions, recent European legislation has paved the way for the introduction of e-fuels for aviation fuels from 2030 onward.

The underlying scientific questions and technological challenges lie in enabling the efficient conversion of CO₂—a kinetically and thermodynamically stable molecule—into high-value products using low-carbon energy sources such as sunlight and electricity.

Scientific objectives

This project aims to address key challenges inherent to CO₂ conversion, such as maximizing carbon and electron incorporation in e-fuel production, exploiting the full solar spectrum in CO₂ conversion for solar fuels, thereby enabling the formation of complex molecular structures from CO₂ and paving the way for new catalytic reactions for CO₂ and unconventional activation modes.

Power CO₂ will promote the scientific innovations needed for the emergence of new CO₂ conversion pathways into ethylene and light alkenes, DMC, fatty acids, hydrocarbons, and fine chemicals, including alcohols, amines, and formaldehyde. For example, the proof of concept for CO₂ electroreduction to formaldehyde will be established for the first time, and the efficient production of ethylene from CO₂ via cascade electro- and thermo-catalytic processes will represent a key and novel technological building block. Innovative developments in photoactive materials and photoreduction devices will set a precedent for converting the full solar spectrum into solar fuels.

The publication of the scientific results obtained is expected to lead to more than 80 patents or peer-reviewed journal articles over a six-year period. Furthermore, the multidisciplinary nature of the tasks will enable the training of 17 PhD students and 417 postdoctoral researcher months in emerging research areas at the interface of photo-, electro-, chemo-, and biocatalysis, materials science, molecular materials, and the architecture of electrochemical and photochemical devices.

First intermediate results

Emergence of promising strategies involving CO₂ intermediates, including CO and formaldehyde.ex. A. Singh et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2024, 146, 32, 22129–22133,

https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c06878

Key expected results by the end of the project

By the end of the project: Breakthrough proofs of concept to accelerate CO₂ conversion, with experimental achievements at TRL 3 across three axes:

[1] Increased carbon and electron conversion yields for e-fuels;

[2] Enhanced utilization of the solar spectrum in CO₂ conversion to ‘solar fuels’;

[3] Formation of complex molecular structures from CO₂.

The consortium

LEM, IRIG, LCBM, LPCV, DRF, IRIG, DIESE, CBM, BEE, IFPEN, CEA-NIMBE, CEA-DRT, LITEN, DTNM, STDC, LVMEINES, LCPB, IPVF, IRCELyon, D’ALEMBERT, LCC, BIP, DCM, INM, ICPEED, ICCF, INL, ICMMO, IC2MP, PERSEE, LPCNO, GENOSCOPE.