Secretary Chu Announces $2.4 Billion in Funding
for Carbon Capture and Storage Projects
DOE Fossil Energy NEWSALERT - 5/15/09
U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu today announced at the National Coal
Council that $2.4 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
will be used to expand and accelerate the commercial deployment of carbon
capture and storage (CCS) technology. The funding is part of the Obama
Administration's ongoing effort to develop technologies to reduce the
emission of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas and contributor to global
climate change, into the atmosphere while creating new jobs.
"To prevent the worst effects of climate change, we must accelerate our
efforts to capture and store carbon in a safe and cost-effective way. This
funding will both create jobs now and help position the United States to
lead the world in CCS technologies, which will be in increasing demand in
the years ahead," said Secretary Steven Chu.
The Department is posting Notices of Intent to issue this funding,
supporting the following initiatives:
Clean Coal Power Initiative: $800 million will be used to expand DOE's Clean
Coal Power Initiative, which provides government co-financing for new coal
technologies that can help utilities cut sulfur, nitrogen and mercury
pollutants from power plants. The new funding will allow researchers broader
CCS commercial-scale experience by expanding the range of technologies,
applications, fuels, and geologic formations that are tested.
Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage: $1.52 billion will be used for a
two-part competitive solicitation for large-scale CCS from industrial
sources. The industrial sources include, but are not limited to, cement
plants, chemical plants, refineries, steel and aluminum plants,
manufacturing facilities, and petroleum coke-fired and other power plants.
The second part of the solicitation will include innovative concepts for
beneficial CO2 reuse (CO2 mineralization, algae production, etc.) and CO2
capture from the atmosphere. In addition, two existing industrial and
innovative reuse projects, previously selected via competitive
solicitations, will be expanded to accelerate scale-up and field testing:
- Ramgen Modification ($20 million): funding will allow the industrial-sized
scale-up and testing of an existing advanced CO2 compression project with
the objective of reducing time to commercialization, technology risk, and
cost. Work on this project will be done in Bellevue, WA.
- Arizona Public Services Modification ($70.6 million): funding will permit
the existing algae-based carbon mitigation project to expand testing with a
coal-based gasification system. The goal is to produce fuels from domestic
resources while reducing atmospheric CO2 emissions. The overall process will
minimize production of carbon dioxide in the gasification process to produce
a substitute natural gas (SNG) from coal. The host facility for this project
is the Cholla Power Plant located in Holbrook, AZ.
Geologic Sequestration Site Characterization: $50 million will fund a
competitive solicitation to characterize a minimum of 10 geologic formations
throughout the United States. Projects will be required to complement and
build upon the existing characterization base created by DOE's Regional
Carbon Sequestration Partnerships, looking at broadening the range and
extent of geologic basins that have been studied to date. The goal of this
effort is to accelerate the determination of potential geologic storage
sites.
Geologic Sequestration Training and Research: $20 million will be used to
educate and train a future generation of geologists, scientists, and
engineers with skills and competencies in geology, geophysics, geomechanics,
geochemistry and reservoir engineering disciplines needed to staff a broad
national CCS program. This program will emphasize advancing educational
opportunities across a broad range of minority colleges and universities and
will use DOE's University Coal Research Program as the model for
implementing the program.
The funding from the Recovery Act is a direct investment in CCS-related
infrastructure encompassing a diverse portfolio of research and
demonstration among electric power and industrial facilities, academic
institutions, and other organizations operating across the United States.
DOE's Recovery Act projects will stimulate private sector infrastructure
investments due to the significant amount of cost sharing that will occur in
all large-scale projects to be selected for implementation. These combined
public and private investments will establish a proving ground for creating
a safe, reliable, widely-available, environmentally-responsible, and
affordable CCS infrastructure.
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