Integrating carbon dioxide (CO₂) electrolysis with CO₂ capture provides exciting new opportunities for energy reductions by simultaneously removing the energy-demanding regeneration step in CO₂ capture and avoiding critical issues faced by CO₂ gas-fed electrolysers. However, understanding the potential energy advantages of an integrated process is not straightforward due to the interconnected processes which require knowledge of both capture and electrochemical conversion processes. Here, we identify the upper limits of the integrated process from an energy perspective by comparing the working principles and performance of integrated and sequential approaches. Our high-level energy analyses unveil that an integrated electrolyser must show similar performance to the gas-fed electrolyser to ensure an energy benefit of up to 44% versus the sequential route. However, such energy benefits diminish if future gas-fed electrolysers resolve the CO₂ utilisation issue and if an integrated electrolyser shows lower conversion efficiencies than the gas-fed system.

Electrochemical CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) provides a promising approach to curbing harmful emissions contributing to global warming. However, several challenges hinder the commercialization of this technology, including high overpotentials, electrode instability, and low Faradic efficiencies of desirable products. Several materials have been developed to overcome these challenges. This mini-review discusses the recent performance of various cobalt (Co) electrocatalysts, including Co-single atom, Co-multi metals, Co-complexes, Co-based metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), Co-based covalent organic frameworks (COFs), Co-nitrides, and Co-oxides. These materials are reviewed with respect to their stability of facilitating CO₂ conversion to valuable products, and a summary of the current literature is highlighted, along with future perspectives for the development of efficient CO₂RR.

The electrochemical CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) is an attractive method to produce renewable fuel and chemical feedstock using clean energy sources. Formate production represents one of the most economical target products from CO₂RR but is primarily produced using post‐transition metal catalysts that require comparatively high overpotentials. Here a composition of bimetallic Cu–Pd is formulated on 2D Ti₃C₂T_x (MXene) nanosheets that are lyophilized into a highly porous 3D aerogel, resulting in formate production much more efficient than post‐transition metals. Using a membrane electrode assembly (MEA), formate selectivities >90% are achieved with a current density of 150 mA cm⁻² resulting in the highest ever reported overall energy efficiency of 47% (cell potentials of −2.8 V), over 5 h of operation. A comparable Cu‐Pd aerogel achieves near‐unity CO production without the MXene templating. This simple strategy represents an important step toward the experimental demonstration of 3D‐MXenes‐based electrocatalysts for CO₂RR application and opens a new platform for the fabrication of macroscale aerogel MXene‐based electrocatalysts.