The U.S. Department of Energy announced more than $2.3 billion for three efforts to advance diverse carbon management approaches that reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution, address the impacts of climate change, and create good-paying jobs while prioritizing community engagement and environmental justice. The first is a Notice of Intent (NOI) for $2.25 billion, funded by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to accelerate geologic carbon storage projects each capable of permanently storing at least 50 million metric tons of captured CO2 – the equivalent to the emissions from roughly 10 million gasoline-powered cars a year. In addition, DOE issued two funding opportunities, totaling $91 million, to increase the number of available CO2 storage sites and to advance critical carbon management technologies. Expanding commercial CO2 storage capacity and related industries will provide economic opportunities for hard-hit communities and help deliver on President Biden’s goal of a achieving an equitable transition to a net-zero economy by 2050.
“This past month we saw the highest levels of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere in history, underscoring the fact that our efforts to tackle climate change will be inconsequential if we don’t act now to manage the greenhouse gas emissions that are currently putting public health and our environment at risk,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The President’s budget commitments coupled with the investments from his Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will enable the U.S. to develop cutting-edge technologies to safely and efficiently capture, remove, and store CO2 while revitalizing communities that have powered this nation for generations.”
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, of which CO2 is the primary component, have risen dramatically over the past several decades. GHGs fuel global warming, increasing the risk of droughts and floods, and putting our agriculture, health and water supply at risk. Enabling development of a suite of carbon management approaches can help reduce GHG emissions and tackle their impact on climate change.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) pathways, like direct air capture with storage, remove CO2 pollution directly from the atmosphere to draw down the concentration of CO2 and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies mitigate CO2 emissions from point sources such as power plants and industrial facilities, by capturing and storing the CO2 they produce. CCS and CDR have the potential to mitigate and remove hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 emissions per year.
