CO₂ electroreduction (CO₂E) is one promising strategy towards decarbonization, offering a path to produce widely used chemicals such as fuels or manufacturing feedstocks using renewable energy and waste CO₂ (as opposed to fossil fuels). CO₂E performance at the laboratory scale is advancing quickly, including ongoing scale-up and industrialization efforts. To address global CO₂ emissions (~37 Gt per year), CO₂ electrolysers and components, as well as upstream and downstream associated technologies, must be deployed at the gigawatt scale. This entails considerable challenges beyond performance, such as resource availability, deployment readability and end-of-life system management, which are today overlooked. In this Review, we analyse the impending resource challenges as CO₂E deployment approaches gigatonne scale, considering a life cycle assessment focused on the associated materials and their corresponding global warming impact. We identify scalability bottlenecks related to membranes, electrode supports and anode materials, among others, and discuss the need for more stable carbon-efficient systems and materials recycling strategies. We conclude with potential approaches to rationally design materials towards sustainable CO₂ capture and electrolysis at the gigatonne scale.

CO ₂ 电还原 (CO ₂ E) 是一种有前途的脱碳策略，为利用可再生能源和废 CO ₂ （相对于化石燃料）。实验室规模的 CO ₂ E 性能正在快速提高，包括正在进行的规模扩大和工业化工作。为了解决全球 CO ₂ 排放问题（每年约 37 Gt），CO ₂ 电解槽和组件以及上游和下游相关技术必须以千兆瓦规模部署。这带来了性能以外的巨大挑战，例如资源可用性、部署可读性和报废系统管理，而这些现在都被忽视了。在这篇综述中，我们分析了随着 CO ₂ E 部署接近十吨级规模而面临的资源挑战，并考虑了重点关注相关材料及其相应的全球变暖影响的生命周期评估。我们确定了与膜、电极支撑和阳极材料等相关的可扩展性瓶颈，并讨论了对更稳定的碳效率系统和材料回收策略的需求。最后，我们提出了合理设计材料以实现十亿吨规模可持续二氧化碳捕获和电解的潜在方法。