Abstract
Carbon recycling will become a dominant trend toward alleviating extreme climate change and coping with the increasing energy demand in the coming years. Solar-driven strategies have the potential to convert CO2 and solar energy to fuels and chemicals. In this forward-looking perspective, a framework is outlined to achieve a "net-zero emission"blueprint by sorting out the raw sources, potential products, feasible pathways, and practical implementation through photocatalysis, photothermal catalysis, and photoelectrochemical catalysis techniques. We comprehensively inspect and compare the state-of-art works in this framework, including solardriven C-1 fuel production from CO2, as well as direct and stepwise C-2+ fuel production involving solar-driven C-1 conversion. This analysis aspires to provide the most feasible pathway forward and finds that converting CO2 with renewable H-2 into C-1 can currently obtain the best solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency and that stepwise C2+ fuel production can target products with high selectivity. Future visions on scientific, technological, and economic issues are put forward to determine what should be the focus in the following decades.