Catalysts and Processes for a Renewable Energy Future

The constant increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere as the result of anthropic activities, extensive burning of fossil fuels and deforestation is directly linked to key environment-related issues such as global warming effects, climate changes and sea level rise. Therefore, catalytic CO2 conversion into chemicals and fuels is a "two birds, one stone" approach to give an answer to the urgent priorities of our modern society: the mitigation of climate changes and the growing energy demand-supply. Moreover, it well fits with a society more and more turning around the challenging concept of circular economy. Catalysis is nowadays at the forefront of main societal needs and it represents the key issue to meet with its current environmental and energy concerns. Recent findings from our group have demonstrated how the rational bottom-up synthesis and surface engineering of 1D-3D nanocarbons can give an answer to the production of catalytic materials with improved performance in relevant transformations. Indeed, the tailored N-functionalization of C-nanomaterials has set the way to the development of highly basic nanocarriers as single-phase (electro)catalysts for the activation and conversion of small molecules. Moreover, Ni-NPs decorated composites prepared from highly N-doped and basic C-samples can serve as highly robust and efficient catalysts in the "ever-green" Sabatier process, offering higher performance compared to related benchmark systems from the state-of-the-art. This contribution will focus on the CO2 valorization through the rational bottom-up synthesis of conceptually new catalytic materials for the chemoselective CO2 electrochemical reduction to CO and CO2 methanation.