The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Monday announced $100 million in second round funding opportunities for transformational energy research projects that will be made available through the Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).
The Recovery Act funding will be made available to accelerate innovation of green technology in three areas.
ARPA-E’s first solicitation, announced earlier this year, was highly competitive and resulted in funding 37 projects aimed at transformational innovations in energy storage, biofuels, carbon capture, renewable power, building efficiency, vehicles, and other areas. Today’s announcement is focused specifically on new approaches for biofuels, carbon capture, and batteries for electric vehicles:
Electrofuels. ARPA-E is seeking new ways to make liquid transportation fuels–without using petroleum or biomass–by using microorganisms to harness chemical or electrical energy to convert carbon dioxide into liquid fuels. Most of the methods currently under development involve converting biomass or waste, while there are also approaches to directly produce liquid transportation fuels from sunlight and carbon dioxide, typically using photosynthesis.
The objective of this topic is to develop an entirely new paradigm for the production of liquid fuels that could overcome the challenges associated with current technologies. Although photosynthetic routes show promise, overall efficiencies remain low.
ARPA-E requests innovative proposals which can overcome these challenges through the utilization of metabolic engineering and synthetic biological approaches for the efficient conversion of carbon dioxide to liquid transportation fuels. ARPA-E specifically seeks the development of organisms capable of extracting energy from hydrogen, from reduced earth-abundant metal ions, from robust, inexpensive, readily available organic redo active species, or directly from electric current. Theoretically such an approach could be 10 times more efficient than current photosynthetic-biomass approaches to liquid fuel production.
Innovative Materials & Processes for Advanced Carbon Capture Technologies (IMPACCT). The objective of this topic is to fund high risk, high reward research efforts that will revolutionize technologies that capture carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants, thereby preventing release into the atmosphere. ARPA-E seeks to complement existing DOE efforts in the field of carbon capture, led by the Office of Fossil Energy and National Energy Technology Laboratory, by accelerating promising ideas from the basic research stage towards large-scale demonstrations and ultimately, commercialization.
Areas of interest include: low-cost catalysts to enable systems with superior thermodynamics that are not currently practical due to slow kinetics; robust materials that resist degradation from caustic contaminants in flue gas; and advanced capture processes that dramatically reduce the parasitic energy penalties and corresponding increase in the cost of electricity required for carbon capture.
Batteries for Electrical Energy Storage in Transportation (BEEST). In this topic, ARPA-E seeks to develop a new generation of ultra-high energy density, low-cost battery technologies for long electric range plug in hybrid electric vehicles and electric vehicles (EVs). The development of high energy, low cost batteries represents the critical barrier to wide-spread deployment of EVs, which if achieved would have a profound impact on U.S. oil security, greenhouse gas emissions, and economic growth.
The ambitious goals for this program are largely based upon the aggressive long term EV battery goals set forth by the United States Automotive Battery Consortium, a public-private collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy and leading U.S. automotive companies. If successful, new battery technologies developed under this program will give electrified light-duty vehicles range, performance, lifetime, and cost required to shift transportation energy from oil to the domestically powered U.S. electric grid.
$979 Million for CCS
In a separate release, DOE announced the selection of three new projects with a value of $3.18 billion to accelerate the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) at a commercial-scale for coal-fired power plants.
An investment of up to $979 million, including funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will be leveraged by more than $2.2 billion in private capital cost share as part of the third round of the Department’s "Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI)".
Some of the many criticisms aimed at CCS concern increased costs of energy production, loss of generation capacity that would require additional generation, and inability to capture high levels of carbon dioxide. DOE said the selected projects will address these issues and work towards the following goals:
- a target CO2 capture efficiency of 90%
- a capture and sequestration goal of less than 10% increase in the cost of electricity for gasification systems and less than 35% for combustion and oxycombustion systems
The Clean Coal Power Initiative Round III was created in 2005 to reduce the time it would take for low-emission coal technologies to be ready for commercial use. These awards are the second installment of projects awarded under CCPI Round III. Two projects were previously selected under CCPI Round III in July 2009 to receive $408 million in DOE funds.
Selections announced include:
American Electric Power Company, Inc. (NYSE: AEP) (Columbus, OH):Project Title: Mountaineer Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Demonstration.
American Electric Power (AEP) will design, construct and operate a chilled ammonia process that is expected to effectively capture at least 90% of the CO2 (1.5 million metric tons per year) in a 235 megawatt flue gas stream at the existing 1,300 megawatt Appalachian Power Company (APCo) Mountaineer Power Plant near New Haven, WV. The captured CO2 will be treated, compressed, and then transported by pipeline to proposed injection sites located near the capture facility. During the operation phase, AEP plans to permanently store the entire amount of captured CO2 in two separate saline formations located approximately 1.5 miles below the surface. The project team includes AEP, APCo, Schlumberger Carbon Services, Battelle Memorial Institute, CONSOL Energy, Alstom, and an advisory team of geologic experts. (DOE share: $334 million; project duration: 10 years)
Southern Company Services, Inc. (NYSE: SO) (Birmingham, AL) Project Title: Southern Company Carbon Capture and Sequestration Demonstration
Southern Company Services (SCS) will retrofit a CO2 capture plant on a 160 megawatt flue gas stream at an existing coal-fired power plant, Alabama Power’s Plant Barry, located north of Mobile, AL. The captured CO2 will be compressed and transported through a pipeline, and up to one million metric tons per year of CO2 will be sequestered in deep saline formations. Southern Company Services will also explore and utilize potential opportunities for beneficial use of the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. In addition to SCS, the project team includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, Schlumberger Carbon Services, Advanced Resources International, the Geological Survey of Alabama, EPRI, Stanford University, the University of Alabama, AJW Group, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. (DOE share: $295 million; project duration: 11 years)
Summit Texas Clean Energy, LLC (Bainbridge Island, WA)
Project Title: Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP)
Summit Texas Clean Energy, LLC will integrate Siemens gasification and power generating technology with carbon capture technologies to effectively capture 90% of the carbon dioxide (2.7 million metric tons per year) at a 400 megawatt plant to be built near Midland-Odessa, TX. The captured CO2 will be treated, compressed and then transported by CO2 pipeline to oilfields in the Permian Basin of West Texas, for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations. The Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at the University of Texas will design and assure compliance with a state-of-the-art CO2 sequestration monitoring, verification and accounting program. (DOE share: $350 million; project duration: 8 years)
In 2008, More than 100 environmental groups joined together, urging politicians to ignore the false promise of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), which they say will only prolong dependence on dirty and dangerous energy sources and reward the world’s biggest polluters.
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