A bulk of the investment will be made to fast-track geologic carbon storage projects
The US DOE will fund three efforts to reduce carbon pollution in the country. (Credit: marcinjozwiak from Pixabay)
The US government will invest over $2.3bn to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution in the country as well as address the effects of climate change.
According to the US Department of Energy (DOE), the investment will be made to fund three efforts for advancing diverse carbon management approaches.
The first effort is to accelerate geologic carbon storage projects in the country with an investment of $2.25bn, which will be funded by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The carbon storage projects will each have a capacity of permanently storing at least 50 million metric tons of captured CO2. This is equivalent to the emissions from nearly 10 million gasoline-powered cars a year, said the DOE.
Apart from that, the department has issued two funding opportunities with total funding of $91m. Under these, the government expects to ramp up the number of available CO2 storage sites and advance critical technologies pertaining to carbon management.
An amount of $45m will be allocated to enhance procedures to safely, efficiently, and affordably define and evaluate onshore and offshore storage sites for CO2 at a commercial scale.
The third opportunity involves funding of $46m for developing technologies to eliminate, capture, and convert or store CO2 from utility and industrial sources or the atmosphere.
The DOE said that increasing commercial CO2 storage capacity and related industries will create economic opportunities for hard-hit communities, while helping the country in achieving its goal of becoming a net-zero economy by 2050.
US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said: “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.
“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 revitalising communities that have powered this nation for generations.”
The three opportunities will be handled by the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM).