The US Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) revealed its initiative to partly fund research that would accelerate the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), agency officials said in a release.
The FECM's Nov 9 pledge to contribute to the funding of increased carbon storage is essential for the Biden-Harris Administration's target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
"@ENERGY announces its intent to fund cost-shared R&D on large-scale geologic carbon storage for carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal technologies through its CarbonSAFE Initiative to help decrease climate change," FECM wrote in a Twitter post.
The DOE will choose prospective beneficiary projects as part of its CarbonSAFE Initiative, which seeks to construct geologic storage facilities capable of storing at least 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
"Significant advancements have been made in CCS technologies over the past two decades, scaling up both point source carbon capture and CDR technologies such as direct air capture, the press release stated, "The funding opportunity, if released, will build upon this body of knowledge to support the assessment and verification of safe and cost-effective geologic storage of captured CO2 at commercial-scale, with consideration to minimizing impacts to and potentially providing benefits for the environment and frontline communities."
CDR focuses on reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, while carbon capture and storage CCS reduces CO2 emissions from industrial facilities by storing the CO2 they emit.
The gathered carbon would subsequently be permanently stored in geologic carbon storage sites.
CCS, the news release states, is critical for decarbonizing the energy and industrial sectors effectively as they convert to a net-zero carbon economy.
Similarly, CDR technology may be used to reduce carbon emissions in difficult-to-decarbonize enterprises, ultimately eradicating legacy CO2 emissions from the atmosphere.
