Increasing energy demand triggered by industrialization has led to high carbon dioxide (CO2) emission into the environment, causes rise in earth temperature resulting in global warming. Therefore, there is urgent need to develop a cost effective methods and materials for its sequestration from point source and reduce its impact on the environment. This paper reviewed the recent development in functionalized composites for CO2 capture. The composites can help to develop more efficient technologies and cost effective materials for CO2 capture in view of the exponential growing demand for energy. Myriad of researchers have focused interest on the development of novel materials to trap CO2 using solid sorbents that appear promising. The composite adsorbents have superficial properties in terms of surface area, pore characteristic, adsorption capacity and stability at high temperature. The superior properties can be achieved by surface modification via activation or functionalization. The study revealed that functionalized composites provides superficial properties in terms of surface area, microporosity and high adsorption capacity for CO2 sequestration. However, the development of carbon based composite derived from lignocellulose biomass and understanding the mechanism and kinetics of CO2 onto functionalized composite have been graced with few research and needs to be explored further. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.