The key challenge to developing renewable and clean energy technologies lies in the rational design and synthesis of efficient and earth‐abundant catalysts for a wide variety of electrochemical reactions. This review presents materials design strategies for constructing improved electrocatalysts based on MOF precursors/templates, with special emphasis on component manipulation, morphology control, and structure engineering. Guided by these strategies, recently developed MOF‐derived materials have exhibited remarkable activity, selectivity, and stability for various energy‐conversion processes, manifesting great potential for replacing precious‐metal‐based catalysts in next‐generation energy devices. Existing challenges and opportunities regarding MOF‐derived electrocatalysts are also discussed. It is anticipated that by extending current materials design strategies to a wider range of MOF precursors for various energy‐related electrocatalytic reactions, significant advances toward achieving highly efficient electrocatalysts can be made.

A two-dimensional metal–organic framework comprising nickel species and an organic ligand of benzenedicarboxylic acid is fabricated and explored as an electrocatalyst for urea oxidation reaction.