EPA Announces $50 Million in Effort to Bolster State, Tribal CO2 Storage Programs 

The following statement can be attributed to Jessie Stolark, member relations and policy manager of the Carbon Capture Coalition: 

“This week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $50 million in grant funding made available by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to assist states, Tribes and communities in developing and implementing programs for permitting and monitoring Class VI injection wells, which are required for the dedicated geologic storage of CO₂. Along with the historic enhancements to the federal Section 45Q tax credit included as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, effective implementation of this modest, but vital, permitting resource could be transformative to the anticipated scale-up of carbon management deployment as a result of increased federal policy support enacted in the 117th Congress.   

“While industry has decades of commercial experience safely storing CO₂ geologically at large scale, only two Class VI injection wells exists in the U.S. today. Nevertheless, over half of the more than 120 currently announced carbon management projects in development have declared their intent to store CO₂ in dedicated geologic storage sites. Additionally, more than a dozen project developers have filed applications at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Class VI well permits, which regulate the storage of CO₂. 

“Robust and efficient permitting of CO₂ storage is central to ensuring that the significant recent federal investments in these technologies achieve their full climate, jobs and economic potential. The resources announced by EPA today will be critical to ensure adequate permitting capacity that is absolutely essential for the economywide deployment of carbon management projects.” 

You can find a sample Letter of Intent for proposal submission here. 

You can find a fact sheet on the Class VI injection wells program here. 

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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.