  Increasing anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) emissions have led to rising
global temperatures and climate change. Using earth-abundant metal-oxide
catalysts such as Cu$_2$O for reducing CO$_2$ through RWGS reaction seems
lucrative. In this work, we have used Cu$_2$O nanostructures and identified its
activity, stability, and selectivity for reducing CO$_2$ to carbon monoxide
(CO) which can be further hydrogenated to higher hydrocarbons using Fisher
Tropsch synthesis. We have observed that the rate of CO$_2$ conversion
increases by 4 times and significantly drops at 300 C where the catalyst was
reduced to metallic Cu and the rate increases slightly as the temperature is
further increased. The selectivity of CO$_2$ reduction is majorly towards CO
with a trace amount of methane. We can further exploit the Mie resonance
characteristics of Cu$_2$O nanocatalysts and in-situ generation of hydrogen for
hydrogenation of CO$_2$ to enhance the activity of the catalysts. We can
further identify the optimum size and shape of the nanocatalysts required and
use hybrid nanostructures which can favor RWGS reaction thus improving the
stability of these catalysts.
