Power and Capture Program

Advancing technologies to stabilize, optimize, and grow the American coal industry, ensuring its role as a reliable and affordable component of the U.S. energy landscape through developing innovative coal-based electric generation and waste-to-value solutions.

Stabilize • Optimize • Grow

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Power and Capture Program, operating under the Office of Coal, provides a platform for developing technologies that stabilize, optimize, and grow the American coal industry, restoring it as a cornerstone of the U.S. energy mix. The DOE’s Office of Coal leads efforts to ensure that coal remains a reliable, affordable, and resilient component of America’s energy system, aligning with the Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office’s mission to unleash the full potential of America’s hydrocarbon and geothermal resources.

The Power and Capture Program supports efforts focused on:

Modernizing and extending the operational life of the existing U.S. coal-based power fleet;
Capturing and converting plant waste streams, including sulfur dioxide (SO₂), wastewater, and coal combustion residuals (CCRs) for beneficial purposes to diversify revenue streams, improving the flexibility and efficiency of plants; and
Developing high-efficiency and flexible coal-based power generation technologies and integrated approaches to secure coal’s foundational role in the future U.S. energy mix.

Stabilize

This mission focuses on extending the lifespan of existing coal-fired power plants by recommissioning, reactivating, and retrofitting these valuable assets. Modernizing power plants with targeted upgrades that improve performance offers rapid reliability benefits at a time of accelerating load growth and grid stress, retaining coal’s strategic value to the electric grid. By revitalizing these assets, the mission ensures the delivery of reliable, affordable, and secure electricity to high-priority loads, such as defense installations, facilities for semiconductor manufacturing, digital systems, industrial clusters, and residential areas.

Optimize

This mission serves to boost the economic viability, operational flexibility, efficiency, and reliability of coal-fired power plants. It seeks to achieve significant economic benefits by transforming waste streams into valuable assets, thereby creating new revenue streams. These efforts include recovering water and other commercial byproducts through advanced wastewater treatment, and capturing and converting plant waste streams, including flue gas desulfurization materials and CCRs into new marketable products. The mission also supports improvement of plant fuel flexibility to adapt to market demands and maintain system stability. Efficiency improvements are sought through the integration of advanced sensors, diagnostic approaches, manufacturing, and digital twins into plant operations, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Grow

This mission aims to advance novel, high-efficiency solutions for coal-based electricity, including advanced ultra-supercritical (A-USC), oxygen-based combustion, chemical looping combustion, and fluidized bed technologies, along with integration with thermal or hybrid energy storage for enhanced operational flexibility. Advanced combustion systems can be paired with highly efficient supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂) power cycles to boost thermal efficiency and reduce overall cost of electricity. The ultimate goal is to significantly increase capacity factors of coal-fired plants, ensuring their competitiveness and reliability within dynamic, modern energy markets. The mission also explores coupling coal power generation with data centers, powering them with reliable, flexible, and cost-effective, behind-the-meter electricity.

News and Announcements

Regional Coal Workshop Series: Southwestern Region
This workshop focused on critical technology advancement areas, from cost-effective wastewater management to AI-driven predictive maintenance, flexible operations, transformational coal technologies, post-combustion capture for enhanced hydrocarbon recovery, and value-added byproducts.

Event Information

Regional Coal Workshop Series: Southern Region
These workshops focused on critical technology areas, from cost-effective wastewater management to AI-assisted predictive maintenance and flexible operations and from transformative coal technologies, including post-combustion capture, to CO2-enhanced hydrocarbon recovery and value-added byproducts derived from coal and coal ash.

Event Information

Regional Coal Workshop Series: Eastern Region
This workshop focused on critical technology areas, from cost-effective wastewater management to AI-assisted predictive maintenance and flexible operations, and from transformative coal technologies, including post-combustion capture, to CO2-enhanced hydrocarbon recovery and value-added byproducts derived from coal and coal ash.

Event Information

Regional Coal Workshop Series: Northern Region
This workshop focused on critical technology advancement areas, from cost-effective wastewater management to AI-driven predictive maintenance, flexible operations, transformational coal technologies, post-combustion capture for enhanced hydrocarbon recovery, and value-added byproducts.

Event Information

Report: Maximizing the Value of the U.S. Coal Fleet
This report includes background information that forms the basis for recommendations that, if implemented, will help preserve and modernize the coal fleet.

View Report