Climate change is of great urgent in the near future, and CO₂ capture, utilization, and storage, namely CCUS, represent one of the promising solutions. Along the CCUS chain, CO₂ utilization via different technical routes represents an effective, profitable, and smart option for CO₂ reduction. In this context, the International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilization (ICCDU), although born more than 25 years ago, is catching eyes from energy, environment, policy, and other areas at both academy and industrial levels. The 15^th ICCDU (ICCDU XV) was jointly hosted by Shanghai Advanced Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences and ShanghaiTech University, which took place between 17^th–21^st, July, 2017. Two symposiums focusing on technical development and frontier research on CO₂ utilization were also involved in the conference. The objective of ICCDU XV is to gathering the most up-to-date researches progresses, and provide a platform for all the participants to exchange ideas, communicate thoughts, and establish collaborations.

According to the recent trend in CO₂ utilization and related topics, ICCDU XV included five topics: CO₂ as a green feedstock via reduction, CO₂ as a building block via functionalization, CO₂ Capture and mineralization, CO₂ as a working agent, Carbon budget, policy and strategies. We are pleased to have over 300 participants from USA, Brazil, Mexico, UK, German, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Korea, China, and other places of the world join the conference. 4 plenary lectures and 14 keynote talks were delivered during ICCDU XV together with 97 oral presentations, which make the conference a great success. We hope that the discussion during ICCDU may contribute further development of CO₂ utilization, particularly, the catalytic conversion of CO₂ to value-added products. We would like to express our sincere thanks to the plenary invited speakers for their acceptance of our invitation: Prof. Mingyuan He from East China Normal University, Prof. Michele Aresta from University of Bari, Dr. David Nevicato from TOTAL, Prof. Chunshan Song from Pennsylvania State University at University Park, Prof. Park Sang-Eon from Inha University, Dr. Julio Friedmann from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Prof. Yin Li Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, CAS. This special column mainly contains 5 invited papers that cover the most important aspects of CO₂ to polymers and CO₂ to chemicals.

As guest editors, we express our sincere thanks to the authors who contributed to this special column. We also thank the reviewers for helping to improve the papers, and providing their reviews in a short time. Finally, we would like to thank Professor Can Li and Professor Tao Zhang, Editors-in-Chief of Chinese Journal of Catalysis, for their kind invitation to be the Guest Editor. During the preparation of this special column, huge efforts were contributed from the editorial staff of journal, which are highly appreciated.