WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Energy released a Request for Information yesterday to obtain input for implementing Future Growth Grants under the Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation (CIFIA) program established under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). NETL is collecting the responses to the request for information.

Future Growth Grants may cover the cost of developing extra transport capacity up front, before future CO₂ suppliers such as carbon capture and Direct Air Capture (DAC) facilities are developed, contracted, and brought online. Additional investments up front to increase the diameter of CO₂ pipelines and enable future additional pumping or compression can substantially increase pipeline capacity; however, this extra unused capacity is hard or even impossible to finance in the U.S. “open-season” approach to private financing of pipelines, in which final investment decisions are based on pipeline developers demonstrating that they have locked in contracted demand from pipeline users.

These up-front investments in additional capacity could also help avoid additional construction, permitting, leasing and environmental impacts. Increasing capacity in other modes of CO₂ transportation including by rail, barge, ship, truck and multi-modal transport are also within consideration.

Large-scale transportation infrastructure capable of transporting anticipated increased CO₂ flow rates and volumes could enable development of future additional carbon capture and DAC projects without building new transport infrastructure to accommodate that growth, thus achieving long-term economies of scale for all future CO₂ suppliers and a reduced overall infrastructure footprint.

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. 

Organizations that respond to the RFI can respond to all or only a portion of the RFI.  Responses to this RFI must be submitted electronically to FutureGrowthRFI@netl.doe.gov with the subject line “DE-FOA-0002894-RFI” no later than 5:00 p.m. (ET), Jan. 17, 2023.