Turning CO2 into fuel

With new fossil fuel power stations being built every week, and the idea of burying CO2 [ carbon sequestration ] regarded by many scientists as unproven or even unworkable, coming up with an alternative solution to what to do with CO2 is more pressing than ever. What chemists dream about is turning CO2 from a dangerous greenhouse gas into a useful fuel. But to make this dream a reality will take more than clever chemistry. That's why a team at Oxford University is bringing together expertise in chemistry, materials science, engineering and the social sciences to tackle one of the grand challenges of the 21st Century. A simple recipe - Peter Edwards of Oxford University's Department of Chemistry, one of the leaders of this team, starts by telling me about the simplest recipe for turning CO2 into fuel: just add hydrogen, then inject some energy from sunlight and you can produce methanol - a versatile feedstock that can be made into all kinds of fuels. It's a nice idea, but there's a big problem. 'Where do you get the hydrogen from?' Peter asks.