DOE Releases 4.9 Billion for Carbon Management Activities

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) also recently announced a nearly $4.9 billion set of funding opportunities to bolster investments in the carbon management industry and to significantly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions released into the atmosphere through power generation and industrial operations. The funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will support three programs to help drive the demonstration and deployment of carbon capture systems, along with carbon transport and storage infrastructure. Large-scale deployment of carbon management technologies is crucial to addressing the climate crisis and meeting the goal of a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy by 2050.
 
The Inflation Reduction Act, recently signed into law by President Biden, invests even further in building a domestic carbon management industry, with substantial improvements to the federal carbon capture tax credit (45Q/Sec. 13104). DOE’s analysis estimates that actions taken through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will drive 2030 economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2005 levels. 
 
DOE’s three funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) are:  
 

• Carbon Storage Validation and Testing – This FOA supports the Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) Initiative—managed by the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM)—and provides up to $2.25 billion to support the development of new and expanded large-scale, commercial carbon storage projects with capacities to store 50 or more million metric tons of CO2, along with associated CO2 transport infrastructure. Projects will focus on detailed site characterization, permitting, and construction stages of project development under CarbonSAFE.

 

• Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects Program – DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), in partnership with FECM, will manage the Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects Program. The program provides up to $2.54 billion to develop six integrated carbon capture, transport, and storage demonstration projects that can be readily replicated and deployed at fossil energy power plants and major industrial sources of CO2, such as cement, pulp and paper, iron and steel, and certain types of chemical production facilities. The FOA released today provides up to $189 million for up to 20 integrated front-end engineering design studies, with a second FOA expected later in 2022 to support detailed design, construction, and operation of carbon capture projects, as well as transport and storage of the captured CO2.

 

• Carbon Dioxide Transport Engineering and Design – FECM will manage the Carbon Dioxide Transport, Front-End Engineering, and Design FOA which provides up to $100 million to design regional CO2 pipeline networks to safely transport captured CO2 from key sources to centralized locations. Projects will focus on carbon transport costs, transport network configurations, and technical and commercial considerations that support broad efforts to develop and deploy carbon capture, conversion, and storage at commercial scale.

 
For more information on the DOE’s Carbon Management Funding Announcement, visit here.