The question behind this radar: of fourteen routes to low-carbon ethylene, which is improving fastest, and can it close its energy gap? Electrochemical CO₂-to-ethylene improves at 44.1%/yr, more than three times the steam-cracking benchmark (13.0%), and it is the only route that sped up every year from 2017 to 2023. Where patents quote energy, it still needs 38–74 MWh per tonne against 1.5–5.7 for electrified cracking.
Methodology co-developed with MIT over 30 years of peer-reviewed research.
Click a route to inspect it on the radar above. Seven of the fourteen routes clear the median improvement rate of 20%/yr. Only one of them is both fast and past lab scale with a growing filing base: electrochemical CO₂.
Source: GetFocus Chemicals Technology Strategy Radar · TIR last full year 2023 · verdicts from the September 2026 readout
Electrified cracking is where Aramco, Sinopec, BASF and Linde are filing. Its volume is climbing and its rate is falling, the usual sign of a route moving from invention into engineering. CO₂ electrolysis is rising on both.
Electrochemical CO₂/CO more than doubled, from 19.1% to 44.1%. Electrified cracking fell from 26.5% to 19.8%. Steam cracking held at 12–13%.
CO₂-electrolysis filings grew from 65 to 317 a year. Electrified cracking went from 9 to 90, most of it after 2021.
Source: GetFocus platform · TIR and filings per route · 2024–2026 TIR repeats 2023 while citation data accumulates
The rate says CO₂ electrolysis is moving. The deep-dive agents read 3,669 publications across six routes for feedstock, pathway and every energy figure quoted per tonne of ethylene.
CO₂ electrolysis, against 1.5–5.7 for electrified cracking and under 2 for ethanol dehydration.
Minimum electricity for CO₂ and water to ethylene. The rate cannot compound through it.
Full-cell energy efficiency, from 2019 filings to a 2024 filing: about 26 MWh/t.
Median mA/cm² quoted in the filings, from before 2016 to 2022–23. Faradaic efficiency barely moved.
of filings reduce CO₂ directly on copper. The CO-first cascade is about one in twelve, and holds the only side-by-side energy comparison.
Stable operation in the handful of filings that report it at all. This, not selectivity, is the weak link.
From the September 2026 deep-dive readout · every figure traces to a cited patent claim or description
The energy gap can shrink from ten-fold to three to five times by 2030, then it stops at the floor. The radar holds the thresholds so you act on the trigger, not on the headline.
As broad or as narrow as the decision needs. This radar runs fourteen route datasets, six of them read in full by the deep-dive agents.
Defined thresholds for energy efficiency, current density, stability hours and filing momentum tell you when to move.
A monthly signal digest per domain, a quarterly executive review with our analysts, and trigger alerts the moment a threshold is crossed. The radar never goes stale, and neither does your answer.
Electrochemical CO₂/CO rose for a sixth consecutive year: 44.1%/yr in 2023, up from 19.1% in 2017.
Acidic electrolytes reached 8% of new CO₂-electrolysis filings: up from 1–2% before 2022, aimed straight at the carbonate loss.
A 2024 Toronto / TotalEnergies filing reports 51% full-cell energy efficiency: up from about 20% in their 2019 filings.
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