DOE Awards $126 Million For Carbon Sequestration

Two large-scale carbon sequestration projects — the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership and the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership — landed a total of $126.6 million in U.S. Department of Energy funds. The cash will be used to test carbon sequestration technology in California and Ohio. The two projects are the fifth and sixth projects the DOE has funded to improve carbon storage technology.

Both projects are intended to demonstrate the CO2 injection process, from pre-injection characterization to post-injection monitoring, and between the two projects, the DOE expects to see injections of one million tons or more of CO2. So far, the DOE has pursued similar tests in the Plains, Southeast and Southwest regions, through similar regional partnerships. DOE acting deputy secretary of energy Jeffrey Kuper alls these projects “the most promising of the major geologic basins in the United States.” He followed up in a press release from the DOE by saying that, “Collectively, these formations have the potential to store more than 100 years of CO2 emissions from all major point sources in North America.”

Carbon sequestration is a pretty costly investment. John Gartner wrote about the issue late last year, and it's still as problematic as it was then.

Image — Oak Ridge National Laboratory