Recent advances on electrocatalytic CO2 reduction to resources: Target products, reaction pathways and typical catalysts

•Resource products are formed by carboxyl, methanoyl, alkyl-alcoholization, alkylation pathways.•Alloy, N-doped organometallic, ADMCs and nano-catalysts show good electrocatalytic CO2RR performance.•Catalytic devices optimization is a necessary solution to the low power utilization.•Homopolar or heteropolar co-catalysis of CO2 with other substances is a new direction in the future.