Today, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) announced plans to make $4 million in federal funding available for cost-shared research and development of tools and methods to optimize safe, secure, and verifiable carbon dioxide (CO₂) storage.

Funding opportunity announcement (FOA), DE-FOA-0002401, Emerging CO₂ Storage Technologies: Optimizing Performance Through Minimization of Seismicity Risks and Monitoring Caprock Integrity, will support the goals of the Advanced Storage R&D technology area of DOE’s Carbon Storage Program.

DOE’s Carbon Storage Program focuses on developing, testing, and verifying technologies and techniques that address challenges related to long-term, commercial-scale storage of CO₂ in the deep subsurface. Key initiatives within the Advanced Storage R&D area include improvements to monitor the seal integrity of caprocks and to predict seismicity magnitudes and potential hazards before and during the injection of CO₂.

The intent of the FOA is to solicit and competitively select cost-shared applications that show the most promise for developing novel tools and methods to improve:

• The ability to cost-effectively detect and characterize faults during the site characterization phase of potential storage sites, especially the detection and characterization of faults located in the crystalline basement rocks beneath the sedimentary rock layers that could be targeted for CO₂ storage.
• The ability to accurately assess the maximum likelihood magnitude seismic event that large-scale CO₂ injection at a particular site could create, particularly for faults located in the crystalline basement rocks beneath the sedimentary rock layers that could be targeted for CO₂ storage.
• The identification, location, and quantification of CO₂/native fluid migration through the main caprock layer(s) overlying an injection reservoir.

Read more of the FOA.

The Office of Fossil Energy funds research and development projects to reduce the risk and cost of advanced fossil energy technologies and further the sustainable use of the Nation’s fossil resources. To learn more about the programs within the Office of Fossil Energy, visit the Office of Fossil Energy website or sign up for FE news announcements. More information about the National Energy Technology Laboratory is available on the NETL website.