DOE splits $20M award among four regional carbon capture, storage projects

Published on October 19, 2021 by Chris Galford

Approximately $20 million was awarded to four regional carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) projects by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) last week to reduce CO2 emissions from industrial sources and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

The award was split into four equal parts, divided among university-led partnerships with academia, non-governmental organizations, industry, and local/state governments. They included:

• Battelle Memorial Institute — the Regional Initiative to Accelerate CCUS Deployment in the Midwestern and Northeastern USA project will consist of 20 Midwestern and Northwestern states to review regional infrastructure and technical challenges to deploying CCUS in three sedimentary basins and the Arches province.
• New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology — the Carbon Utilization and Storage Partnership of the Western United States project will cover 15 Western states and focus on compiling geologic datasets for storage resource analyses and identifying lapses in data.
• Southern States Energy Board — the Southeast Regional Carbon Utilization and Storage Partnership project spreads across 15 Southeast states in an effort to identify at least 50 potential sites to evaluate storage resource potential and infrastructure needs.
• University of North Dakota Energy and Environmental Research Center — among 13 Northwest states and four Canadian provinces, the Plains CO2 Reduction project will identify and work on onshore regional storage and transport challenges impacting the commercial deployment of CCUS.

“Every pocket of the country can and will benefit from the clean energy transition, and that includes our expanded use of carbon capture and storage technology to remove carbon pollution from fossil fuel use,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said. “Through DOE’s Regional Initiatives projects, we are making sure states—especially those with historic ties to fossil fuel industries—can access technology innovations to abate carbon pollution and enhance their local economies so that no worker or workforce is left behind.”

Each effort will work to promote CCUS projects, as well as investigate technical challenges to their deployment, aid the collection, sharing, and analysis of data, evaluate regional storage and transportation infrastructure and encourage regional transfer of technologies. The end goal is support for the commercialization of CCUS overall.