The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $131 million for 33 research and development projects to advance the wide-scale deployment of carbon management technologies to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution. The projects will address technical challenges of capturing CO2 from power plants and industrial facilities or directly from the atmosphere and assess potential CO2 storage sites, increasing the number of sites progressing toward commercial operations. Expanding commercial CO2 storage capacity and related carbon management industries will provide economic opportunities for communities and workers, helping to deliver on President Biden’s goal of equitably achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
“By deploying tools to capture, remove, and store CO2 emissions, we can dramatically reduce the air pollution harming our health and intensifying extreme weather events,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The projects announced today will get us closer to achieving our climate goals while helping to revitalize local economies and deliver environmental benefits to communities too often left behind.”
Increased carbon pollution is contributing to the heightened risk of droughts and floods and putting our agriculture, health, and water supply at risk. Carbon capture technologies manage CO2 emissions at the source, such as a power plant or industrial facility, by capturing and storing the CO2 they produce. Carbon dioxide removal pathways, such as direct air capture with storage, remove CO2 pollution directly from the atmosphere to draw down the concentration of CO2 and reduce the impacts of climate change. Both carbon capture and carbon removal have the potential to eliminate hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 pollution per year.
Carbon Management Awards
DOE is investing $38 million in 22 projects awarded under the “Carbon Management” funding opportunity that will develop technologies to capture CO2 from utility and industrial sources or directly from the atmosphere and transport it either for permanent geologic storage or for conversion into valuable products such as fuels and chemicals. Projects will examine commercial viability and technical gaps, while also examining environmental and community impacts of the technologies.
Selected carbon dioxide removal projects will support the cost and performance goals of DOE’s Carbon Negative Shot initiative, which calls for innovation in pathways that will capture CO2 from the atmosphere and permanently store it at meaningful scales for less than $100/net metric ton of CO2-equivalent. CO2 storage projects announced today under this FOA will look specifically at assessing potential resources for mineral carbon storage—where the CO2 becomes permanently stored as a solid mineral through a chemical reaction. A detailed list of the selected carbon management projects can be found here.
CarbonSAFE Awards
DOE is investing $93 million in 11 projects awarded under the “CarbonSAFE: Phase II - Storage Complex Feasibility” funding opportunity that will improve procedures to safely, efficiently, and affordably assess onshore and offshore CO2 project sites within a storage complex at a commercial scale. Projects were selected under DOE’s Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) initiative, which focuses on developing geologic storage sites with potential to cumulatively store 50 or more million metric tons of CO2. A detailed list of the selected CarbonSAFE projects announced today can be found here.
DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) will manage the selected projects.
DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) funds research, development, demonstration, and deployment projects to decarbonize power generation and industrial production, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and mitigate the environmental impacts of fossil fuel production and use. Priority areas of technology work include carbon capture, carbon conversion, carbon dioxide removal, carbon dioxide transport and storage, hydrogen production with carbon management, methane emissions reduction, and critical minerals production.
To learn more, visit the FECM website, sign up for FECM news announcements, and visit the NETL website.
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