Presentation Date: Feb 14, 2026
AGSA Abstract
Electrochemical CO₂ reduction (CO₂RR) has emerged as a promising strategy for converting captured CO₂ into value-added fuels, chemicals production and carbon utilization when driven by renewable energy. However, despite major scientific progress in catalyst design and mechanistic understanding, commercialization remains limited. This gap exists because excellent laboratory performance does not automatically translate into economic viability at scale, therefore a techno-economic analysis is essential to determine whether CO₂RR can realistically become a competitive pathway for sustainable chemical production and carbon utilization. While the electrochemical reduction of CO₂ offers a promising pathway to convert CO₂ into valuable fuels and chemicals, its true environmental impact is not obvious as CO₂RR uses electricity, materials, catalysts, solvents, membranes, and separation systems all of which introduce hidden environmental burdens. This study presents a comprehensive techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) of CO2RR on ethanol production using OpenLCA with Ecoinvent 3.9.1 database. We evaluate ethanol production cost to be $1.82/kg, analyzing both carbon intensity and production costs across multiple operational scenarios, varying key technical parameters including Faradaic efficiency (40-90%), cell voltage (3.5-5V), electricity prices and CO2 sources. Results shows that electricity is the dominant factor for both TEA and LCA, contributing about 75% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Sankey Diagrams from OpenLCA showing the direct and upstream contribution of the entire electrochemical reduction process reveals the process to be carbon positive contrary to the intended objective. We establish quantitative benchmarks and identify breakeven points for grid carbon intensity, demonstrating that successful commercialization requires achieving high Faradaic efficiency (>60%), low cell voltage (<3.5V), renewable electricity and low-CO2 sources. This work shows essential guidance for industrial implementation of CO2RR technologies in the transition toward a circular carbon economy.
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