In an interesting article scientists have discovered how to make alcohol out of thin air. The process involves repurposing carbon dioxide into useful chemicals.
What Ming Ma has done is come up a new method for controlling a process called electroreduction, which is used in CCU to turn CO2 into other kinds of molecules.
Ma's PhD thesis, which is being defended this week – one of the stages in receiving the academic qualification – describes at the nanoscale level how different metals used during electroreduction can be used to produce different chemical results.
I don't know the impact of this result politically or practically. The process is interesting because it seems to be able to use electroreduction to change at the nano scale level CO2 (carbon dioxide gas) into alcohol or perhaps even other chemicals.