H2 production vs. CO2 reduction

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Here is a recent viewpoint article published in ACS Energy Letters discussing the merits of using solar energy (or solar-derived electricity) to 1.) split water for H2 production, or 2.) reduce CO2 into liquid hydrocarbon fuels:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsenergylett.6b00377

There is a lot of active research ongoing for both of these pathways, so this is an important discussion to be having.

The article nicely articulates the reasons for not performing CO2 reduction from CO2 captured from coal fired power plants. However, there are other sources of CO2 as well, such as cement plants, or capturing CO2 directly from air (so-called negative emissions) as discussed in this article:

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/33/13156