ICCDU was funded in 1991 and had its real first serial meeting in 1993 in Bari, IT. But how was it born? Here is the history of its 30 years of life.

In 1986 and 1989 I was the organizer and co-ordinator of two NATO (North Atlantic Treatise Organization) Schools, namely “CO2 as source of carbon” and “Enzymatic and Model Carboxylation and Reduction Reactions for CO2 Utilization”, respectively, aimed at creating a contact between skilled young researchers and experts from different areas, such as chemistry, industrial processes, plant physiology, biochemistry, biotechnology, microbiology. The Schools were attended by close to 100 young scientists and the lectures delivered were collected in two books published by Reidel and Kluwer, respectively. Such two events boosted Junior Researchers mobility and Senior Researchers collaborations. It was during the 1989 School, that with two Japanese colleagues attending it, Kaname Ito and Tomoyuki Inui, decided to organize in 1991, within a Conference on Catalytic Syntheses in Nagoya, a Session dedicated to “CO2 chemical utilization” and I was invited as plenary speaker there. The Conference gathered mainly Asian colleagues with a very few from EU and USA. During the above-mentioned Conference, talking to Ito and Inui we agreed on the opportunity of setting a continuing event that could gather the “CO2 community”. The real first ICCDU was organized in Bari-IT in 1993, were we recognized the two Schools and the 1991 event in Nagoya as the nest of the Series and considered the Nagoya Conference as ICCDU-I.

In Bari, ICCDU gathered some 220 scientists from all over the world (34 Countries were represented) confirming its real international character. The International Scientific Committee of ICCDU was set that gathered all prominent scientists in the chemical, industrial and microbiological areas. The ISC named me as Permanent Secretary, and took the decision of organizing a biennial event, visiting, in turn, the three main geographical areas where CO2 utilization was developing: Europe, Asia, and America.

ICCDU was started and moved around the world as shown below.

I held the Chair position until 2013, when ISC suggested that it was time to designate a younger Colleague: Prof. Chunshan Song from PennState was named Chair with Prof. Angela Dibenedetto, University of Bari, as Vice-Chair. The ISC named me Honorary Chairman. Starting 2015, ICCDU was organized on an annual basis, considering the growing number of scientists working in the CO2 area all over the world.

ICCDU has had the great merit of keeping cohered the worldwide scientific community working in the area of CO2 conversion, mainly the chemical part, while the community of biochemists, physiologists and microbiologists made waving appearance, depending on the venue where the Conference was organized. ICCDU covers today a large number of topics spanning from biological fixation, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, electrochemistry, carbonation of waste, hydrated CO2, Life Cycle Assessment, Integrated Processes, CO2 enabling/sustainable processes.

The series of ICCDUs, location and Organizer(s): I) Nagoya, JP K. Ito 1991; II) Bari, IT M. Aresta 1993; III) Oklahoma, USA K. Nicholas 1995; IV) Kyoto, JP T. Inui 1997; V) Karlsruhe, DE E. Dinjus 1999; VI) Breckenridge, USA D. D. Darensbourg and D. Dubois 2001; VII) Seoul, SK K.-W.Lee and S.-E. Park 2003; VIII) Oslo, NO R. Heyn 2005; IX) Kingston, CA P. Jessop 2007; X) Tianjin, CN C.-J. Liu 2009; XI) Dijon, FR D. Ballivet 2011; XII) Alexandria, USA C. Song 2013; XIII) Singapore, SG S. Kawi and I.Karimi 2015; XIV) Sheffield, UK P. Styring 2016; XV) Shanghai, CN Y. Sun 2017; XVI) Rio de Janiero, BR C. Mota 2018; XVII) Aachen, DE W. Leitner and D Kraemer 2019; XVIII) Daejeon, SK J.Lee and SE Park 2021; XIX) Princeton-USA A Bocarsly 2022 ; XX Bari, A. Dibenedetto.