DOE Coal FIRST Initiative to invest $80M into net zero carbon electricity, hydrogen plants

Under a funding opportunity from the United States Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and its Coal FIRST Initiative, $80 million will be split between four projects for cost-shared research and development of hydrogen energy plants with net zero carbon emission.

Hydrogen plants like these will be fueled through mixes of coal, natural gas, biomass, and waste plastics. They will also utilize carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies to increase their capabilities. Coal FIRST seeks flexible concepts for meeting grid needs, innovative in terms of efficiency improvements, resilient, small compared to modern utility-scale power plants, and capable of transforming how coal power plant technologies are designed and built.

Each project selected for this initiative will undergo design development, host site evaluation and environmental information volume, investment case analyses, and a system integration design study. The design study should help advance designs of any engineering-scale prototypes. In each case, the National Energy Technology Laboratory will act as manager.

Coal FIRST seeks to promote hydrogen to reduce global carbon emissions while still allowing for traditional fuels. The DOE notes that fossil fuels already utilizing CCUS technologies are by far the lowest cost course of low-carbon hydrogen. Gasification of both coal and biomass could act as large-scale sources of carbon-negative hydrogen. The addition of plastic waste could also help reduce plastics waste around the country.