Bioenergy Technologies Office

Beyond Fossil Carbon? Green Electricity Is Opening Doors to Low-Emission Alternatives for Making Fuels and Chemicals

NREL offers insight into the economic feasibility and key cost drivers of producing chemical intermediates from CO2 and renewable electricity across five different conversion pathways.

Many questions remain about the costs, risks, and technical challenges of making chemicals and fuels from green electricity and recycled carbon. Where are the technologies at today? Where could they be in the future? And how does that play a role in next steps and future research needs?

In a pair of papers published in Energy and Environmental Science and ACS Energy Letters, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) scientists and partners explore the technical and economic potential of electrifying—and decarbonizing—fuel and chemical production. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, the analysis could help mark the path forward from the lab to the commercial world.

Discover how NREL is staking the boundaries of producing chemicals and fuels from carbon dioxide (CO₂), biomass, and renewable electricity. Also use NREL’s Economic Feasibility for CO₂ Utilization Data Visualization Tool to analyze key CO₂ conversion metrics.