WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Energy released a Request for Information yesterday to obtain input on the best approaches and options for developing field laboratories, whether at Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) initiative project sites or other sites. NETL is collecting the responses to the request for information.

This initiative will catalyze the rapid development and field testing of technologies that would support a safe and affordable carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry.

To help decarbonize the U.S. economy to net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050, DOE is making unprecedented investment in CCS deployment. DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) will help leverage these investments by accelerating technology development through field tests in carbon storage settings. More specifically, FECM seeks to leverage carbon storage sites and existing infrastructure that could offer opportunities for third-party researchers and technology developers to test, validate and demonstrate emerging technologies that need to be attempted at locations with suitable characteristics (e.g., known subsurface or infrastructure conditions, easy-to-negotiate access agreements and confidentiality agreements, and access to existing data or monitoring systems). Furthermore, FECM sees an opportunity to harness the real-world data and information that can be gathered throughout the lifecycle of commercial-scale CCS projects with the aim of optimizing safe and affordable operations on a lifecycle basis.

To realize this vision, FECM will consider whether to establish a multi-year field-based research and development (R&D) initiative, to be named Carbon Storage Technology Operations & Research (CarbonSTORE), which will provide funding to operators of facilities and support to researchers working to help accelerate the development of enabling technologies needed to underpin the gigaton-scale infrastructure required to meet national goals for net zero CO2 emissions. If funded, this initiative would establish multiple CarbonSTORE facilities serving as long-term carbon storage field laboratories, which may be aligned with the CarbonSAFE projects, other CCS projects or even non-storage sites that have applicable infrastructure.

This is solely a request for information and is not a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). DOE is not accepting applications to this RFI.

To review the RFI, please click here. 

Responses to this RFI must be submitted electronically to RFI0002900@netl.doe.gov with the subject line “DE-FOA-0002900-RFI” no later than 5:00 p.m. (ET), Jan. 9, 2023.