DOE Carbon Reuse Grants Announcement Signals Progress in Commercialization 

The following statement may be attributed to Jessie Stolark, Executive Director of the Carbon Capture Coalition:      

“As the national coalition focused on advancing and implementing climate-essential carbon management policies, the Carbon Capture Coalition welcomes this week’s DOE announcement of a new Carbon Utilization Procurement Grants program. Carbon utilization, also referred to as carbon reuse or conversion, is the reuse of carbon oxides (CO₂, or its’ precursor, CO) captured from industry, power, and directly from the atmosphere to produce valuable products. This new program, enacted as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), provides $100 million in federal funding to ‘support states, local governments, and public utilities in purchasing products derived from converted carbon emissions.’  

Creating a market for captured carbon through reuse in products is a key component to advancing carbon management technologies at the pace and scale necessary to fulfill our collective climate obligations, protect high-wage jobs that families and communities depend upon, while maintaining global technology leadership, and we are pleased to see this funding moving forward.  

“Recognizing the important role carbon reuse technologies play in mitigating planet warming emissions while providing Americans with essential products needed for everyday life, the Coalition supported the inclusion of this competitive purchasing program in the BIL, to jump-start the local purchasing of products sourced from carbon reuse.  

Additionally, the important nature of this program is echoed in the Coalition’s 2023 Federal Policy Blueprint which endorses DOE’s efforts to boost the viability and uptake of innovative carbon reuse technologies by enabling the purchasing of these products that can demonstrate displacement or permanent storage of carbon emissions. Importantly, carbon reuse projects also have the potential to remove harmful co-pollutants that are present in captured emissions.  

Carbon reuse is an essential technology among the full suite of carbon management tools needed to decarbonize the American economy. If properly incentivized, this nascent sector has the potential to create robust, sustainable supply chains while abating the production of greenhouse gas emissions. With that in mind, the Carbon Capture Coalition was proud to endorse the bipartisan Carbon Capture Utilization Parity Act earlier this year, which would create parity between 45Q credit levels for utilization and storage, thereby making these important technologies cost-competitive with secure geologic storage projects.  

As carbon reuse technologies emerge as a critical climate mitigation tool, we are encouraged by the DOE’s recent announcement as we believe it reinforces the need for swift action on this important legislation and demonstrates the need for continued federal policy support for carbon reuse technologies, broadly. We look forward to the announcement of the grants funded by this program when they are finalized in 2024.”   

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Convened by the Great Plains Institute, the Carbon Capture Coalition is a nonpartisan collaboration of more than 100 companies, unions, conservation and environmental policy organizations, building federal policy support to enable economywide, commercial scale deployment of carbon management technologies. This includes carbon capture, removal, transport, utilization, and storage from industrial facilities, power plants, and ambient air.