US DoE announces $68.4m funding for CCS geo-storage projects
The US Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy has announced $68.4m of research and development funding for on-and-offshore storage of commercial-scale (50+ million metric tons) volumes of CO2. Planned in two phases, the Carbon Storage Assurance and Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) initiative is aiming for integrated Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) complexes, constructed and permitted for operations, by 2025.

DOE Announces $68.4 Million in Funding to Advance the Safe and Permanent Storage of CO2

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced $68.4 million for cost-shared research and development (R&D) projects.

DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy, under two funding opportunity announcements (FOA), seeks cost-shared projects that will determine the feasibility of developing onshore and/or offshore geologic storage complexes capable of cumulatively accepting commercial-scale (50+ million metric tons) volumes of CO2.

Currently, projects supported by the Carbon Storage Program involving CO2 injection have focused on pilot or short-term, large-scale injection tests. The Carbon Storage Assurance and Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) initiative is intended to develop integrated CCS storage complexes, constructed and permitted for operation in the 2025 timeframe over a series of sequential phases of development.

Phase I CarbonSAFE: Integrated CCS Pre-Feasibility is soliciting and competitively seeking R&D projects that will provide a pre-feasibility study for a commercial scale geological storage site. Objectives include the formation of a CCS coordination team capable of addressing any regulatory, legislative, technical, public policy, commercial, financial, and other issues specific to commercial scale deployment of the CO2 storage project.

The projects will develop a plan encompassing technical requirements, as well as both economic feasibility and public acceptance of an eventual storage project. In addition, selected projects will perform a high-level technical evaluation of the sub-basin and potential CO2 source(s).

Phase II, CarbonSAFE: Storage Complex Feasibility FOA is soliciting and competitively seeking R&D projects to perform the initial characterization of a storage complex identified as having high potential. They will also establish the complex’s feasibility for commercial storage (50+ million metric tons CO2).

The objectives of this phase include and extend the pre-feasibility work under CarbonSAFE: Integrated CCS Pre-Feasibility, focusing on one or multiple specific reservoirs within the defined storage complex, and comprising efforts in data collection; geologic analysis; identification of contractual and regulatory requirements and development of plans to satisfy them; subsurface modeling to support geologic characterization, risk assessment, and monitoring; and public outreach.