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  • NEWS FEATURE

The race to upcycle CO2 into fuels, concrete and more

Companies are scrambling to turn the greenhouse gas into useful products — but will that slow climate change?
  1. Mark Peplow

    1. Mark Peplow is a science journalist in Penrith, UK.

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View of the Carbon Recycling International CO2-to-methanol plant in Anyang, China.

Part of a chemical plant in Tongyezhen, China, that will recycle about 160,000 tonnes of CO2 into fuel each year. Credit: Carbon Recycling International

Tongyezhen is a town with coal in its bones. In this part of China’s Henan province, people have been mining coal and smelting metals for millennia. Today, Tongyezhen hosts a sprawling industrial park where huge ovens bake coal and limestone into coke and lime, both key ingredients for producing steel. Unsurprisingly, it is one of the smoggiest places in China.

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Nature 603, 780-783 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00807-y

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