fuels by creating thermodynamically favorable, reactive environment are presented. In the first part, high-pressure approach (up to 500 bar) to synthesize methanol and derived products by means of CO2 hydrogenation will be described, It affords outstanding catalytic performance of >95% CO2 conversion with >98% methanol selectivity with the highest methanol weight time yield reported to date. Also, our attempts to learn about the catalyst states under operando conditions will be shown. Furthermore, operando visual and spectroscopic inspection of catalyst and deactivation mechanism will be presented during the high-pressure synthesis of another CO2 conversion reaction, dimethyl carbonate (DMC) synthesis from CO2 and methanol over CeO2 using an organic dehydrating agent. In the second part, our recent attempts to combine CO2 capture and reduction processes by means of unsteady-state operation will be described, targeting at the synthesis of pure syngas or methane from diluted CO2 (flue gas). I present how space- and time-resolved operando spectroscopy can be used to study such dynamic catalytic systems.