DOE invests over $13 million for projects that capture carbon emissions from industrial facilities, power plants, air, and oceans

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) recently announced 23 projects to receive a total of more than $13 million in funding supporting research and development (R&D) for carbon management technologies and applications that will reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions to address the impacts of climate change. The projects will be led by universities and private sector companies across the United States to advance technologies toward commercial deployment that will capture CO₂ from sources such as industrial facilities or power plants, or directly from the air and oceans, and convert the CO₂ into valuable products such as fuels, chemicals, and building materials. These efforts will help deliver on President Biden’s goal of a net-zero economy by 2050, while providing high-quality jobs and economic opportunities for our energy communities.

“Carbon capture and storage, carbon dioxide removal, and carbon conversion will play an essential role in support of our national decarbonization efforts. By leveraging the expertise of our university and industry partners in carbon management, DOE’s investments are helping the nation make great strides toward achieving rapid, geographically widespread adoption of these technologies.”

Brad Crabtree, Assistant Secretary of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management

The first set of four projects (selected under round one of this funding opportunity) will support R&D for technologies that can convert CO₂ emissions captured from industrial facilities and power plants into long-lived building materials like concrete, while significantly reducing overall life cycle emissions in the process. The projects will also focus on improving the cost efficiency of these processes.

The second set of 19 R&D projects (selected under round two of this funding opportunity) will support cost-effective processes for ocean-based carbon removal technologies and direct air capture of CO₂ coupled with carbon-free hydrogen to create carbon-neutral methanol — a chemical building block for many valuable products such as fuels and plastics.

DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), under the purview of FECM, will manage the selected projects. A detailed list of the selected projects can be found here for the round one selections and here for the round two selections.

With these selections, FECM has announced investments of over $678 million in about 170 projects since January 2021 that advance research, development, and deployment of carbon capture, removal, transport, conversion, and storage. This progress is essential to help drive economic development, technological innovation, and the creation of high-wage jobs as we build a clean energy and industrial economy.