Engineering enzymes with new-to-nature reactivity remains a great challenge in biocatalysis. Combining the merits of biocatalysis and photocatalysis represents a powerful approach to address this challenge.

We devise a new, record-efficient, system for the electrified synthesis of ethylene oxide from CO2. We do so by developing a new electrocatalyst that significantly increases the system’s selectivity towards the production of ethylene oxide, with a faradaic efficiency of 35%.