Industry Gets Funds For Carbon Capture

The Department of Energy announced it would provide $612 million—to be matched by $368 million in private funding—for three projects to capture and sequester CO₂ from industrial sources of greenhouse gases. The projects are large-scale, DOE notes, and are expected to be on-line by 2012 to 2014. Funded projects include a new methanol plant in Lake Charles, La., run by Leucadia Energy, which will capture 4.5 million tons of CO₂ per year. Air Products & Chemicals’ Port Arthur, Texas, plant will capture 1 million tons of CO₂ annually from existing steam-methane reformers. The CO₂ from both of these projects will be piped through a Denbury Resources interstate pipeline; used for enhanced oil recovery at the Hastings West oil field, in Texas; and then sequestered underground. The third project will capture 1 million tons per year of CO₂ from the Archer Daniels Midland ethanol plant in Decatur, Ill., and sequester it in a deep saline reservoir near the plant. All government funding came through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.