Richardson Announces New Effort to Develop Affordable Ways to Capture and Sequester Greenhouse Gases

The U.S. Department of Energy is again calling on the scientific community to expand the menu of options for dealing with the long-term issue of global climate change. The department has released a new solicitation offering up to $18 million to develop concepts that can capture and sequester carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson announced the new solicitation today, calling carbon sequestration "research that is good for the environment and good for the future of fossil fuels. It can add an important third option -- joining energy efficiency and the use of lower carbon fuels -- to the world's strategies for countering the buildup of greenhouse gases"

"When I spoke to a conference of the world's coal experts last June, I called on the global technical community to create new research partnerships and to join us in finding low cost ways to capture and permanently store greenhouse gases," Richardson said. "Now, we are following up that call with federal dollars which we hope will serve as a catalyst to encourage these new research teams and foster new research ideas."

The department has set two dates for proposers to submit their research projects - January 3, 2000, and May 1, 2000. Winning projects could be funded for up to three years.

The solicitation is the second issued in recent weeks as the Energy Department begins to expand its carbon sequestration research program. In August, the department targeted a request for proposals to the nation's national laboratories, encouraging them in certain areas to team with industrial partners.

To make sequestration an economically feasible option, the department has set a cost goal of around $10 per ton of carbon. If this cost range can be achieved, the department believes it may be practical to offset all projected growth in greenhouse gas emissions from the United States beginning around 2015. If sequestration technologies are broadly adopted by the United States and other countries, it may be possible to stabilize global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at levels many experts believe will avoid adverse environmental impacts.

"Carbon sequestration is at a very early, exploratory stage," said Robert Gee, the department's Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy who oversees the department's carbon sequestration applied development effort. "We still must answer many questions before we know whether it offers an environmentally safe, commercially viable option. But if we are successful, sequestration can enable consumers to continue benefiting from low-cost, plentiful fossil fuels without today's concerns over their effect on the globe's climate."

In its solicitation, the department identified six research areas. Proposers could submit projects that span multiple categories or multiple projects in different categories. The six are:

• Modeling and assessments - The department is looking for better, more accurate ways to assess costs, risks, and potential of carbon sequestration technology. New analytical tools in this area could play an important role in determining which of the most promising research efforts warrant further development.

• Separation and capture - The department is interested in technologies that can lower the costs and make other improvements in technologies for separating greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, from the gas streams of energy facilities and other sources;

• Sequestration of carbon dioxide in geologic formations - Projects are encouraged that identify and resolve technical and environmental issues in sequestering carbon dioxide in oil and gas reservoirs, unmineable coal seams, and deep saline formations.

• Ocean sequestration - Projects in this category could involve technologies for injecting carbon dioxide into deep areas of the oceans, methods that add nutrients to ocean surface waters to stimulate carbon dioxide-absorbing phytoplankton, or possibly concepts for converting carbon dioxide into mineral or other forms that are stable in the ocean or on the ocean floor.

• Sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems - In this category, the department, through its Offices of Fossil Energy and Science, will work with the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop ways to enhance the natural carbon dioxide-absorbing processes of soils and vegetation. A particular emphasis will be placed on integrating measures for enhancing the carbon uptake of farmland, forests and other terrestrial ecosystems with fossil fuel production and use.

• Advanced concepts - This category could include novel chemical or biological methods for converting carbon dioxide into either commercial products or into inert, long-lived stable compounds.

Copies of the solicitation have been posted at www.fetc.doe.gov/business/solicit.

-End of TechLine-

For more information:
Otis Mills, Jr., DOE Federal Energy Technology Center, 412/386-5890, e-mail: mills@fetc.doe.gov

Technical program contact:
Thomas Dorchak, DOE Federal Energy Technology Center, (304) 285-4305, e-mail: tdorch@fetc.doe.gov