The extraction and consumption of fossil carbon to run our daily lives accounts for over six billion metric tons of CO2 emissions each year. The HI-Light reactor is a solar-thermocatalytic ‘reverse combustion’ technology that enables the conversion of CO2 back to simple hydrocarbons such as methanol, transforming carbon conversion into a profitable enterprise. The design consists of tubes that act as internal light-guiding rods with specially designed scattering surfaces. These enable deep and efficient penetration of the solar radiation captured from a parabolic light concentrator into the reactor, allowing faster reaction rates and selectivity of higher hydrocarbons.