Cheap catalyst turns carbon dioxide into fuel

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Earth abundant materials can be nano-engineered to make best use of increasingly abundant solar power 

The sun ultimately provides the energy for almost every living organism on Earth, and could supply all of humanity’s renewable energy needs. But storing and transporting this energy is hard. Now researchers in Switzerland have developed a catalyst, made entirely from earth-abundant materials, that allows solar-generated electricity to reduce the environmental pollutant carbon dioxide to the valuable chemical feedstock carbon monoxide.