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Nature Energy (2026)
CO2 electroreduction (CO2E) uses electricity to produce valuable chemicals and fuels. Although much fundamental progress has been made, industrial adoption will rely on an appropriate combination of CO2E energy efficiency, capital cost and lifetime, as well as electricity and carbon price, to achieve a competitive levelized cost of chemicals/fuels. Here we discuss how a consistent set of testing conditions, third-party accreditation and intersectoral partnerships can prepare CO2E for its transition from bench-scale prototypes to industrial deployment. Drawing on lessons from photovoltaics—which progressed from the laboratory to globally deployed product once the levelized cost of electricity reached grid parity—we recommend establishing robust, transparent testing procedures, as well as objective certification frameworks. We also discuss disanalogies to photovoltaics—how standardizing CO2E feedstocks, product analysis and device configurations may be more challenging and multivariate than in photovoltaics. By quantifying technological maturity, we can better target research efforts and accelerate innovation, which will enable transparent technology comparisons, increasing investment and manufacturing readiness.
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This work was supported by the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation through grants 2437819 and 2428214. This research was also supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (RS-2024-00459468).
These authors contributed equally: Deokjae Choi, Jeongwon Kim.
Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Deokjae Choi, Jeongwon Kim, Bin Chen, Ke Xie & Edward H. Sargent
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Deokjae Choi, Jeongwon Kim, Bin Chen, Ke Xie & Edward H. Sargent
Advanced Photovoltaics Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Deokjae Choi
TotalEnergies Research & Technology USA, Houston, TX, USA
Shaffiq Jaffer
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D.C., J.K. and E.H.S. conceptualized and wrote the paper. B.C., K.X. and S.J. contributed to edits.
Correspondence to Edward H. Sargent.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Energy thanks Joel Ager III, Guenter Schmid and Mengran Li for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Choi, D., Kim, J., Jaffer, S. et al. Translating insights from progress in photovoltaics to accelerate industrial-scale CO2 electroreduction. Nat Energy (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01953-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01953-z
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