A plethora of methods have been developed over the years so that carbon dioxide can be used as a reactant in organic synthesis. Given the abundance of this compound, its utilization in synthetic chemistry, particularly on an industrial scale, is still at a rather low level. In the last 35 years, considerable research has been performed to find catalytic routes to transform CO(2) into carboxylic acids, esters, lactones, and polymers in an economic way. This Review presents an overview of the available homogeneous catalytic routes that use carbon dioxide as a C(1) carbon source for the synthesis of industrial products as well as fine chemicals.

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Binuclear rhenium(I) complexes with 1,2-bis(4,4'-methyl-[2,2']bipyridyl)-ethane and 1,2-bis(4,4'-methyl-[2,2']bipyridyl)-dodecane as bridging ligands and their mononuclear analogues have been synthesized and characterized by their spectroscopic and electrochemical properties. First reduction potentials and luminescence properties as well as the reductive quenching of the emissive state with TEOA were not affected by the alkyl linker. By means of a detailed comparison of the photocatalytic CO(2) reductions of the monometallic and the bimetallic complexes a great beneficial effect on the activity depending on the proximity of the centres was found. In high dilution the overall kinetics in the CO(2) photoreduction of mononuclear complexes are clearly monometallic. If the proximity of the centres is adjusted according to the lifetime of the OER (one electron reduced species) the photocatalytic activity is greatly improved showing a clear bimetallic mechanism. In the binuclear rhenium complexes, both the facile generation of a free coordination site and binuclear interactions for effective two electron transfer can be realized.