Energy Department to award $131M for CCUS projects

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy is awarding $131 million for carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) research and development (R&D) projects.

About $46 million of that is for a new funding opportunity called Engineering-Scale Testing from Coal- and Natural-Gas-Based Flue Gas and Initial Engineering Design for Industrial Sources. This supports engineering studies of carbon capture systems for industrial sources and testing of advanced carbon capture materials and processes. CCUS from industrial sources is vitally important to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Adapting these new carbon capture technologies to make them applicable to industrial sources of emissions is just one of the ways the Trump Administration is using innovation over regulation to reduce emissions while using all of the reliable energy sources at our disposal,” Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said. “This week, as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we celebrate the advancements made when applying these technologies to new sectors. These advancements mark another milestone for the Department, which has been developing and improving the technology across the CCUS value chain for over 20 years.”

The projects will fall under two areas of interest: Initial Engineering Design for CO2 Capture from Industrial Sources; and Engineering-Scale Testing of Transformational Post-Combustion CO2 Capture Technologies.

Also, the DOE awarded about $85 million for five previously announced CCUS projects.

“Carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies are key to addressing global emissions issues, particularly important in developing nations, by making carbon-intensive production and generation cleaner than we ever thought possible,” DOE Under Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes said. “The projects resulting from these two funding opportunities represent an impactful next step that will benefit our nation, economy, and our global environment for decades to come.”

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) will manage the projects from both of these funding opportunities.