(352a) Overview of Doe-Fecm’s Carbon Storage Infrastructure Projects

The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy Carbon Management (DOE-FECM) has been supporting R&D on geologic storage of captured carbon dioxide (CO₂) though its Carbon Transport and Storage Program for more than two decades. A component of the program is the Carbon Storage Infrastructure (CSI) portfolio, which includes a variety of engineering design studies, field projects, and technical assistance partnerships. The CSI projects are helping to facilitate and enable commercial CO₂ storage project development; testing diverse and emerging storage techniques; and providing technology transfer and expertise to geologic carbon storage project developers and key stakeholders, including affected communities. The federal funding for CSI projects is strategically invested to help support the safe, equitable, and environmentally responsible development and deployment of large-scale carbon transport and storage facilities and regional storage hubs.

As of April 2024, the CSI project portfolio includes 41 active projects with a total planned value of approximately $684 million. DOE funding for these projects is approximately $480 million, with the remainder coming from the project performers and their partners in industry, academia, State government, and other organizations. By the end of October 2024, the CSI portfolio is expected to increase by more than 25 projects, with an expected total DOE funding level of around $600 million. The rapid expansion of the portfolio has been enabled through funding from several different provisions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) enacted in November 2021.

Projects in the CSI portfolio fall into three broad categories:

• CarbonSAFE – Since its inception in 2016, projects in the multi-year, multi-phase CarbonSAFE Initiative have focused on identifying (Phase I), investigating, characterizing, designing, and permitting (Phases II and III), and constructing (Phase IV) large-scale storage facilities, each designed to hold 50+ million metric tons of CO₂. Bolstered by funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s (BIL) $2.5 billion allocation for Carbon Storage Validation and Testing (BIL Section 40305), 36 new projects have been added to the CarbonSAFE portfolio over the past two years, with additional projects to be selected via DOE Funding Opportunity Announcements through 2026. The overall goal of the CarbonSAFE projects is to provide access, by 2030, to storage capacity of 2 billion metric tons (MT), with 5.5 billion MT identified contingent storage resources nationwide, and enabling the injection of at least 65 million MT per year. By October 2024, it is expected that 13 Phase I and 6 Phase II projects will have been completed, with 20 Phase II and 21 Phase III projects either underway or in negotiation for award.
• CO₂ Transport Infrastructure – Projects include three stages of transport infrastructure development:
  • Pre-Front-end Engineering Design (Pre-FEED) studies of multi-modal CO₂ transfer facilities which are designed to: accept input from one or more modes of transport (pipeline, truck, rail, maritime); process, compress, and temporarily store (if necessary) the CO₂ to meet downstream transport requirements; and offload the CO₂ onto a different transport mode.
  • Funding from BIL Provision 40303 is supporting front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies for large-scale CO₂ transport from anthropogenic sources to CO₂ conversion or secure geologic storage locations. All modes of CO₂ transport (pipeline, truck, rail, barge, and ship), including any combination of transport modes, may be included in the projects.
  • Future Growth Grants from the Carbon Dioxide Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation (CIFIA) program (BIL Provision 40304) will provide financial assistance for developing and building extra CO₂ transport capacity up front (in advance of contracted demand) that will then be available for future carbon capture, conversion, and storage facilities as they are developed and come into operation. The Future Growth Grants effort is coordinated with DOE’s Loan Programs Office, which offers loans for design and construction of large-scale CO₂ transport infrastructure upon which the projects funded via Future Growth Grants can be based.
• Technical Assistance & Collaboration – Over the past 5 years, DOE has built on the success of its Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSP) Initiative (which ran from 2003 through 2019) by awarding four “Regional Initiative” (RI) projects to teams whose experience in the RCSP Initiative enabled them to identify and address the full range of challenges facing commercial deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and storage. Each of the four RI projects is charged with providing technical, procedural, and outreach assistance to carbon management efforts across a broad region of the U.S. (East-Midwest, Southeast, Great Plains, and West-Southwest). To help address the rapidly increasing demand for technical assistance, six projects were recently selected to augment the efforts of the Regional Initiative projects by providing technical and community engagement assistance to developers of specific, well-defined, large-scale storage facilities or regional carbon management hubs. Ten additional projects are led by State Geologic Surveys or organizations with similar responsibilities, as a means of assembling, organizing, and analyzing geologic data needed to facilitate the development of future commercial carbon storage projects within their respective States. DOE is currently evaluating another set of new projects with the objective to provide assistance in addressing the unique challenges that arise when multiple storage-based projects are sited within a single geologic basin or sub-basin. Challenges may include detecting pressure interference among neighboring storage facilities, establishing legal frameworks for pore space and mineral rights, delineating transportation rights-of way, and navigating diverse regulatory jurisdictions.

Future CSI activities include Carbon Storage Technology and Operations REsearch Facilities (CarbonSTORE), an initiative to develop field laboratories at CarbonSAFE project sites or similar locations at which experiments can be conducted to:

• Compare performance of advanced vs. existing technologies for monitoring carbon storage
• Obtain data to improve storage facility performance
• Reduce uncertainty regarding the potential long-term impacts of CO₂ injection

The Carbon Basin Assessment and Storage Evaluation (CarbonBASE) initiative, to be launched in late 2024, may include research on the following topics:

• Models and monitoring systems designed for assessing/ forecasting/predicting basin-scale storage resource performance and impacts
• Tools, data and technologies that stakeholders (e.g., industry, regulators, investors, insurers, federal/state land managers) can use to assess/confirm isolation of influences between independent projects or to detect interferences
• Studies aimed at enhancing the current understanding of basin-scale geomechanical influences and impacts
• Best practices for efficient and safe CO₂ storage resource management at the basin scale