The chemical sector accounts for a significant share of the total greenhouse gas emissions as the production requires tremendous amounts of energy, and the vast majority of commercially available organic chemicals are sourced from fossil fuel-derived feedstock. Electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction is a promising approach for sequestering CO2 while producing high-value chemicals like ethylene (C2H4), which currently contributes to 862 Mt of the annual CO2 emissions. However, for CO2 electrolysis to be an economically feasible production method for e.g. C2H4, the energy efficiencies must reach levels beyond 50% while exhibiting operating lifetimes of thousands of hours. One of the most promising engineering configurations is the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) due to its relatively low ohmic loss and easy scalability. Current CO2 electrolysis efforts using the MEA technology demonstrate energy efficiencies of only up to 34% and operating lifetimes of tens to a few hundred hours, indicating a gap that needs to be addressed. Typically, the MEA (Figure ) has a compact design and facilitates efficient transport of reactants. A gas diffusion layer (GDL) coated with a catalyst layer allows reactants and products to be transported through the GDL to the active catalyst location. Positioned between the two GDLs is an ion exchange membrane that transports ions and water between the cathode and the anode. In particular, anion-exchange membranes (AEMs) are regarded as one of the most promising membranes for CO2 electrolysis. Their benefit lies in their capability to suppress the competing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) while maintaining a low and stable operating voltage. As the AEM is a core component for MEA, its optimization can substantially improve the MEA capability, realizing its industrial relevance. The performance of an ion exchange membrane is normally predicated upon its high ion exchange capacity (ionic conductivity), while selectively transporting counter-ions in preference to co-ions (permselectivity). 9,10 However, practical applications of AEMs have limitations, and studies have shown that the membrane water content can be a measure of its permselectivity and ionic resistance. Improving the ion exchange capacity typically leads to higher porosity, increasing the free volume for water uptake within the membrane. Consequently, the higher water uptake results in higher liquid and ion crossover. In the context of CO2 electrolysis, the presence of water and cations at the cathode are crucial for the electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction. The reduction of CO2 relies primarily on the protons originating from the anolyte, as the contributions from a humidified gas stream have been shown to be insufficient. The cations are important as they enhance the local electric field and stabilize reaction intermediates on the cathode surface . A study by Endrődi et al. demonstrated how cations, when periodically infused to the cathode in a solution, eventually leach into the anolyte. Consequently, it becomes necessary to continuously supply cations from the anolyte. However, excessive amounts of water and cation crossover across the AEM have indirectly been implicated in system performance decays, leading to salt precipitation and flooding in the GDL. These two effects eventually cause the competing HER to dominate due to CO2 mass transport limitations. Numerous studies have acknowledged these issues and attempted to find possible solutions e.g. using more soluble salts, applying pulsed methods, increasing the PTFE content in the GDL, optimizing the AEMs. . Despite the common consensus on these issues and the attempts to solve them, the transport mechanisms of water and cations in the MEA-based CO2 electrolyzers have yet to be fully understood and overcome.