Our planet urgently needs sustainable solutions to alleviate the anthropogenic global warming and climate change. Homogeneous catalysis has the potential to play a fundamental role in this process, providing novel, efficient, and at the same time eco-friendly routes for both chemicals and energy production. In particular, pincer-type ligation shows promising properties in terms of long-term stability and selectivity, as well as allowing for mild reaction conditions and low catalyst loading. Indeed, pincer complexes have been applied to a plethora of sustainable chemical processes, such as hydrogen release, CO₂ capture and conversion, N₂ fixation, and biomass valorization for the synthesis of high-value chemicals and fuels. In this work, we show the main advances of the last five years in the use of pincer transition metal complexes in key catalytic processes aiming for a more sustainable chemical and energy production.

A new Ru( ii )-complex with an amino-di(NHC) CNC pincer ligand was developed and characterised. In combination with an ionic liquid, it efficiently catalyses formic acid dehydrogenation under mild, additive-free conditions, producing H ₂ and CO ₂ .