The current chemical industry is encountering an urgent need for CO2 reduction. Producing CO and H2 from CO2 and H2O by using renewable electricity might be a feasible solution to produce “carbon-neutral” chemicals and fuels. Developing easily scalable catalysts is key to this. In this issue of Chem Catalysis, Hahn and co-workers show that Zn–Cu catalysts enable efficient CO2 electro-reduction.