The US Department of Energy has awarded nearly $24 million to eight research projects centered on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, US Sec. of Energy Rick Perry announced during a Feb. 27 joint press conference with International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol.
“By 2040 the world will still rely on fossil fuels for 77% of its energy use. Our goal is to produce them in a cleaner way,” Perry said. “These projects will allow America, and the world for that matter, to use both coal and natural gas with near-zero emissions.”
“CCS is the most critical thing we can do to solve the world’s energy demand and climate change problems,” Birol told the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee a few hours later. “Solar and wind are penetrating energy markets, but they’re almost exclusively concentrated on power generation. The bulk of energy used in the industrial sector is primarily coal and gas. More CCS research and development would help.”
The selected projects, each of which will receive about $3 million of federal support, will focus on the development of solvent, sorbent, and membrane technologies to address scientific challenges and knowledge gaps associated with reducing carbon capture costs, DOE’s Fossil Energy Office said.
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