The year 2050 may seem far away, but time is of the essence with climate change. That’s the year when the United Nations–led Race to Zero campaign would like to see businesses, cities, institutions of higher education, and others achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. That same campaign encourages an interim goal of halving emissions by 2030, 9 short years from now. The task is monumental.

This report examines how chemists are addressing greenhouse gases in chemical equations key to economic activity—whether removing them from the product side or converting them to reagents that then become useful materials. Read it to meet entrepreneurs commercializing concrete and steel manufacturing processes with fewer CO₂ emissions, pulling CO₂ directly from air, building proteins and diamonds from CO₂, and more.

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