This Perspective recapitulates recent developments of carbon dioxide utilization in carbon-carbon bond formation reactions, with an intention of paving a way toward sustainable CO ₂ -functionalization and its tangible applications in synthetic chemistry. CO ₂ functionalization reactions possess intrinsic drawbacks: the high kinetic inertness and thermodynamic stability of CO ₂ . Numerous procedures for CO ₂ utilization depend on energy-intensive processes (i.e. high pressure and/or temperature), often solely relying on reactive substrates, hampering its general applications. Recent efforts thus have been dedicated to catalytic CO ₂ -utilization under ambient reaction conditions, however, it is still limited to a few activation modes and the use of reactive substrates. Herein, ideal CO ₂ -functionalization with particular emphasis on sustainability will be discussed based on the following sub-categories; (1) metal-catalyzed ‘reductive' carboxylation reaction of halides, olefins and allyl alcohols, (2) photochemical CO ₂ -utilization, (3) redox-neutral CO ₂ -functionalization, and (4) enantioselective catalysis incorporating CO ₂ to form C-CO ₂ bonds (excluding strain mediated reactions with epoxide- and aziridine-based substrates). Recent progress in these fields will be discussed with the proposed reaction mechanisms and selected examples, highlighting redox-neutral, umpolung, and asymmetric carboxylation to postulate ideal CO ₂ functionalization reactions to be developed in the near future.