According to the Department of Energy, three funding opportunities are being offered under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to strengthen investments in the carbon management industry and to considerably lower CO2 emissions associated with electricity generation and industrial operations
Biden-Harris Administration announces funding of $4.9bn for projects that can address the problem of carbon pollution. (Credit: catazul from Pixabay)
The Biden-Harris Administration has announced funding opportunities totalling around $4.9bn to support the deployment of the infrastructure required for managing and storing carbon pollution.
According to the US Department of Energy (DOE), the set of funding opportunities offered in this regard will strengthen investments in the carbon management industry. Besides, they will help considerably lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with electricity generation and industrial operations.
The funding will be made available from President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Under this, three programmes will be supported to help promote the demonstration and deployment of carbon capture systems in addition to carbon transport and storage infrastructure.
The three funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) made by the DOE are carbon storage validation and testing, carbon capture demonstration projects, and carbon dioxide transport engineering and design.
US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said: “Nearly every climate model makes clear that we need carbon management technology—especially in hard to decarbonise sectors and heavy industries such as steel and cement production—to tackle the climate crisis.
“The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is helping DOE pick up the pace on projects that can store tens of millions of tons of CO2 that would otherwise be emitted, which will bring jobs to our economy and deliver a healthier environment for all Americans.”
The carbon storage validation and testing FOA will offer funding of up to $2.25bn. This will support the government’s Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) initiative, which is being managed by Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM).
Under the FOA, funding support will be available to new and expanded commercial carbon storage projects that can store 50 or more million metric tons of CO2.
DOE said that the carbon capture demonstration projects FOA offers up to $2.54bn for six integrated carbon capture, transport, and storage demonstration projects. The projects that can receive the funding have to be replicated and deployed readily at fossil energy power plants and main industrial sources of CO2.
The programme will be managed by a partnership between the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) and the Office of FECM.
Under the carbon dioxide transport engineering and design FOA, up to $100m of funding will be offered to design regional CO2 pipeline networks for the safe transportation of captured CO2 from major sources to centralised locations. The funding programme will be managed by FECM.
In May 2022, the US government announced an investment of over $2.3bn for reducing CO2 pollution in the country and addressing the effects of climate change.