Director’s Corner

by Brian Anderson, Ph.D.

I’m pleased to share a newly released quarterly report — a round-up of some of our work to meet clean energy goals that call for a net-zero carbon emission electricity sector by 2035 and economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050.  

Our third-quarter success stories describe impressive strides across a range of energy technology development, including:

• A new cooperative agreement from NETL’s Carbon Ore Processing Program, which works to create novel technologies and products from carbon ore and related wastes, that supports economic revitalization in mining communities. 
• An NETL invention for capturing lithium and rare earth elements from brine is attracting commercialization attention from private industry as the world transitions to electric vehicles and develops renewable energy generators that store surplus electricity in batteries for future use. The NETL process is portable and economic and quickly extracts lithium from natural brines and produced water from oil and gas extraction. 
• Our work as part of a three-year cooperative agreement that demonstrated algae grown using CO₂ emitted by a fossil energy power plant can be processed into a nutrient-rich supplement for chicken feed to produce quality eggs and poultry products. With NETL project oversight and support, researchers found that growing algae using flue gas was more productive and resulted in greater amounts of algae compared to using a pure CO₂ stream or ambient air. 

These are only a few examples of our team’s recent successes and contributions as we continue our mission to drive innovation and deliver solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. I invite you to read more about these and other efforts in this report. (PDF version available here.)