The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a set of funding opportunities worth approximately $4.9 billion, meant to strengthen investments in the carbon management industry, as well as to greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions created by power generation and industrial operations, according to a release published on Sept. 23.
Backed by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the funding opportunities will support three programs focused on the demonstration and deployment of carbon capture systems, alongside carbon transport and storage infrastructure. The move is expected to both protect existing industrial jobs and create new ones.
“Nearly every climate model makes clear that we need carbon management technology—especially in hard-to-decarbonize sectors and heavy industries such as steel and cement production—to tackle the climate crisis,” said DOE Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm. “The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is helping DOE pick up the pace on projects that can store tens of millions of tons of CO2 that would otherwise be emitted, which will bring jobs to our economy and deliver a healthier environment for all Americans.”
One such program, Carbon Storage Validation and Testing, supports the Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) Initiative and will provide up to $2.25 billion in financial support to the development of new and expanded large-scale, commercial carbon storage projects capable of storing over 50 million metric tons of CO2, alongside related CO2 transport infrastructure. The projects will be devoted to on-site characterization, permitting and construction stages of project development under CarbonSAFE. The full Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) can be found here.
The second program, Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects Program, will provide up to $2.54 in funding for the development of six integrated carbon capture, transport and storage demonstration projects which can be replicated and stationed at fossil energy power plants, among other major industrial sources of CO2, including cement, pulp, paper, iron, steel and specific chemical production facilities. The full FOA can be found here.
The final program, Carbon Dioxide Transport Engineering and Design, will provide up $100 million in funding for the designing of regional CO2 pipeline networks to safely transport captured CO2 from its sources to centralized locations. The projects will focus on the costs of carbon transportation, the designing of a transport network and other tasks that back broad efforts to develop and deploy carbon capture, conversion and storage at a commercial scale. The full FOA can be found here.
