US announces large-scale carbon storage demo projects

(Pointcarbon, Oslo)The US Department of Energy (DOE) Tuesday awarded the first three carbon storage projects in a programme aimed at testing sites that can store at least one million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2).

The projects are the first of several carbon storage demonstration projects planned through the DOE’s Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships programme, which began in 2003 with a national evaluation of potential sites for storing the greenhouse gas.
Government and industry groups are eager to store underground CO2 emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels, as this prevents them from entering the atmosphere where they contribute to climate change. The storage allows for continued use of fossil fuels for electricity generation.

“Coal is vitally important to America’s energy security, and this technology will help enable our nation, and future generations, to use this abundant resource more efficiently and without emitting greenhouse gas emissions,” Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell said of the storage projects, adding that “successful demonstration of large volume carbon capture and storage technology plays a key role in achieving President Bush’s goals for a cleaner energy future.”

The DOE plans to invest $197 million (€140 million) in the partnership projects over 10 years, but the funding is subject to annual appropriations from the US Congress.

The projects aim to demonstrate the feasibility of injecting CO2 into underground locations where DOE research has concluded it will remain stored for over 1000 years. The three sites comprise different geologic formations: oil fields in North Dakota and the Canadian province of Alberta, sand deposits across the southeastern US, and sandstone formations in seven southwestern states.

Used primarily as testing zones for the viability of future large-scale projects, the sites will inject large volumes of CO2 from naturally-occurring deposits and monitor the process to determine the ability of different geologic settings to store the gas permanently.

In further stages, CO2 captured from fossil fuel-burning power plants will be used.

According to the DOE, the formations to be tested are recognised as the most promising of the geologic basins in the US and collectively have the potential to store more than one hundred years of CO2 emissions from all major sources in North America.

Washington DC