Tag Archives: CCS

Firing up first world’s first coal-fired CCS plant: Five questions for Southern Co | Global CCS Institute

2011-07-06 Adam Aston

After two years of construction, Southern Co. flipped the switch on the world’s largest-scale, coal-fired CO₂ capture facility at a site on the banks of the Mobile River, in Barry, Alabama last month.

Teaming up with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Southern Co. brought on line a 25-megawatt, coal-fired carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) facility on a patch of river-side land that is home to the James M. Barry Electric Generating Plant, one of the largest in Southern Co.’s portfolio.

With more than 42 gigawatts of total generating capacity, and 4.4 million customers, Atlanta-based Southern Co. is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States.

For more details on the Barry CCS project, I had a quick exchange with Southern Co.’s Nick Irvin, a principal research engineer, just before the July 4^th long weekend.

What carbon capture technology is the facility using?

Southern Company teamed up with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries which, together, we are responsible for the CO₂ capture plant design and operation. This facility utilizes the KM CDR Process, a capture technology which was developed jointly by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and The Kansai Electric Power Co.

The first step, of course, is coal combustion, which generates electricity and gives off a flue gas. A share of the flue gas from the main coal power plant is piped to the CCS facility. There, as part of the KM CDR process, the flue gas reacts with KS-1, an amine solvent, which captures the CO₂. This creates a flow of CO₂ that can then be separated from the KS-1, compressed and sent to a sequestration off site.

What made the Barry plant the site of choice?

Barry was chosen on the basis of the facility’s size and status as a flagship site among Southern Co.’s fleet. The main facility here – the James M. Barry Electric Generating Plant – is home to seven generating units, powered by coal and natural gas, with a total nameplate generating capacity of 2,657 megawatts. The CCS plant takes a slipstream of the existing plant’s flue gas, equivalent to about 25 megawatts out of the total 700-megawatt gas flow.

What volume of CO₂ are you capturing?

The facility is designed to capture about 500 metric tons per day, pulling about 90 per cent of the CO₂ out of the inbound flue gas slipstream. Annually, it will operate with the capacity to capture 150,000 tons to 200,000 tons of CO₂.

How is the CO₂being handled?

Pipeline construction is underway to pump the CO₂ to a site about 12 miles away. Beginning this autumn, the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership will transport the captured CO₂ through a pipeline to the Citronelle Oil Field, which is operated by Denbury Resources.

There the CO₂ will be injected 9,500 feet into a deep saline geologic formation. The CO₂ is being injected into an oil-drilling region but it is not being used for enhanced oil recovery. The CO₂ is being sequestered in a formation about 3,000 feet above the deeper oil deposits, where it will remain permanently stored.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), along with its program participants -Denbury Resources, Electric Power Research Institute and Southern States Energy Board – are managing the design and operation of the pipeline and injection system.

What’s next for Southern Co.’s CCS strategy?

The goal at first Southern Co. is developing options to reduce emissions and meet potential regulatory requirements. We want to look at technologies of the future as an option to do this. In addition to the Barry CCS project, the company is also:

Managing the DOE National Carbon Capture Center in Alabama, where we’re testing the next generation of technologies to capture carbon dioxide emissions.
Building a commercial-scale, 582-MW generating plant in Kemper County, Mississipi, using local lignite and the company’s Transport Integrated Gasification (TRIG) technology, with 65 per cent carbon capture and re-use.
Drilling wells to assess geologic suitability for carbon storage at other power Southern Co. power plants
Partnering with universities to train the next generation of CCS engineers and to advance the industry’s geologic testing capabilities.

Other resources: For more information on Mitsushishi’s KM CDR process, which is described as less energy-intensive than other CO₂ capture technologies, see this introduction. Mitsubishi is rolling out the process at a variety of other facilities globally which are listed here.

Check out the original story here:
http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/community/blogs/authors/adamaston/2011/07/06/firing-first-world%E2%80%99s-first-coal-fired-ccs-plant-five-qu

Global CCS Institute

Capturing carbon from the air? Economics make it a non-starter, says blunt U.S. physics report | Global CCS Institute

2011-06-07 Adam Aston

There has been tantalizing, if very early, progress in the technology of capturing CO₂directly from the atmosphere. If such “air capture” could be done economically, developers of the technology imagine it could radically lower the costs and complexity of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

But a recent study has cast serious doubts that such an approach could ever be economically viable.

First, a reminder of how air capture could simplify the development of carbon capture infrastructure. As now envisioned, most CCS regimes would require power plants to capture emissions at or before the smokestack, then pipe the CO₂some distance to regions with the right geology to entomb the greenhouse gas.

Building the pipeline system to transport these gases within North America, an industry insider once explained to me, could be comparable in scale and cost to the construction of the grid of natural gas pipelines that criss-cross the continent, and that have taken most of a century to build.

Air capture could do away with much of that costly network. Whether CO₂ is captured at the source, a mile away, or on the other side of the planet, it doesn’t matter to the atmosphere where the CO₂ is extracted, so long as the same amount, or more, is removed.

This would make it possible to site CO₂ injection operations directly on top of the best geological sites. It could also simplify the CCS challenge in more populated regions, where zoning complexities, property costs, and public anxieties might make local sequestration operations a headache.

A handful of companies are developing early-stage business models headed toward the goal of air capture. Here in New York City, Global Research Technologies (GRT) is working to commercialize “carbon trees” based on a proprietary material being developed at Columbia University that mops up CO₂ from ambient air. (For more on the technology, I profiled GRT’s plans over at NRDC’s OnEarth, here.)

Promising as it sounds, there’s a twist. Surveying the carbon balances behind air capture, a panel at the American Physical Society (APS) in May issued an unusually blunt rejection of the viability of such systems in a report entitled Direct Air Capture of CO₂with Chemicals.

The report’s criticism focuses not on the technical viability of direct air capture (DAC) of CO₂, but on the peculiar catch-22 carbon balance that powering any such systems would put in motion.

In short, DAC systems would have to be powered by low-carbon energy sources such as renewables. But in any scenario where there are still higher-carbon power plants on the grid, there’s a bigger benefit to simply using the low-carbon energy sources to replace the higher-carbon power plants and hold off on the DAC systems. In other words, DAC doesn’t make sense until big CO₂emitters are virtually eliminated from the globe’s power plant mix.

Here’s how the authors put it…

…[ DAC] is not currently an economically viable approach to mitigating climate change. Any commercially interesting DAC system would require significantly lower avoided CO₂costs…. In a world that still has centralized sources of carbon emissions, any future deployment that relies on low-carbon energy sources for powering DAC would usually be less cost-effective than simply using the low-carbon energy to displace those centralized carbon sources. Thus, coherent CO₂ mitigation postpones deployment of DAC until large, centralized CO₂ sources have been nearly eliminated on a global scale…

As I read it, the report shouldn’t derail research into DAC technologies per se. Given the alarming momentum of CO₂ growth in the atmosphere, such tools are potentially powerful aides for the long-term carbon reduction. But the findings should remove the idea that DAC offers a short cut—along with geo-engineering—that could allow humans to continue emitting, business-as-usual, in the hopes that a future, far-off technology will solve the problem of atmospheric CO₂ buildup.

“This report provides no support for arguments in favor of delay in dealing with climate change that are based on the availability of DAC as a compensating strategy,” concludes its authors, among whom is Princeton University’s Robert Socolow. Along with Stephen Pacala, Socolow co-authored the hugely influential “carbon wedges” analysis of the climate change challenge.

As Bill Sweet succinctly puts it over at IEEE Spectrum’s EnergyWise blog, the APS report “will take atmospheric capture of carbon off the policy agenda. This means, together with the collapse of an anticipated nuclear renaissance, that coming to terms with climate change will be more challenging than ever.”

Download a copy of the American Physical Society paper evaluation here, as a PDF.

Read the original here: http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/community/blogs/authors/adamaston/2011/06/07/capturing-carbon-air-economics-make-it-non-starter-says

Global CCS Institute

New Jersey pulls out of multi-state greenhouse gas trading regime – signs of 2012 election? | Global CCS Institute

2011-06-06 Adam Aston

In what could prove to be an early signal of carbon policy dynamics in the 2012 presidential race, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the sole multi-state, cap-and-trade program operating in the U.S., was dealt a setback when the governor of New Jersey announced plans to exit the program late last month.

Against a backdrop of record fiscal deficits, New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie announced plans to end the state’s participation in the two-year old program, calling it a gimmicky and costly failure. The move culminated months of political pressure from Republican state legislators as well as campaigns sponsored by conservative national groups to exit the program.

This is not a deathblow to the program but the withdrawal of the second largest state economy in RGGI—pronounced like Reggie—hurts momentum to build low-carbon energy technologies, from renewables to carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilots. If the governor’s decision survives anticipated legal challenges, it could set a precedent for others. Earlier in May, legislators in three other states rejected bills to pull those states out of the 10-state program too.

As a policy experiment, RGGI was heralded as a potential template for the development a nation-wide carbon cap and trade program, and as such has emerged as a key target for opponents of climate change policy. If the program derails, green energy funding would suffer, too. To date, RGGI has conducted 11 quarterly auctions that have raised nearly $861 million from sales of carbon allowances. According to RGGI data, almost two thirds of the proceeds have been steered to fund energy efficiency and alternative energy technologies.

In the national context, Gov. Christie’s move provides a snapshot of the paradoxical politics of climate change in the U.S. at the moment. While announcing plans to exit the carbon-trading program, the governor simultaneously reversed an earlier position doubting the science behind global warming.
At the RGGI news conference, Christie also pledged to maintain the state’s commitment to renewables, to support the build out of more solar and offshore wind energy, while also pledging to prevent the construction of any new coal-fired power plans in his state. In early June, however, Christie slashed the state’s goal to develop renewable sources of electric power. From a minimum of 30% of all supply by 2021 — one of the most ambitious in the nation — the governor wants to aim for 22.5%, calling the new target more “achievable”.

The governor also released a report saying the state’s emissions had already fallen below goals for 2020, but discounted RGGI’s role in the shift. Quoted by Christa Marshall of ClimateWireNews, Christie said:

“We remain completely committed to the idea that we have a responsibility to make the environment of our state and world better,” Christie said. “We’re not going to do it by participating in gimmicky programs that don’t work.” He said New Jersey would depart RGGI by the end of the year.

“Reduced emissions have been due to increased use of natural gas, and the decreased use of coal. We’re seeing that the market, and not RGGI, has created incentives to reduce the use of carbon-based fuels,” Christie added.

Christie’s decision highlights the dramatic shift in the politics of climate in the Republican Party over the past decade. Keep in mind that RGGI was first championed by George Pataki, top Republican governor of New York in the early 2000s. That was a time, barely a decade ago, when Senator and eventual Republican presidential nominee John McCain also backed climate policy.

A decade later Christie, who has repeatedly denied any intention to run for president, is a darling of the Republican punditry. And of the few Republican candidates who have officially declared a bid to seek the presidency, Mitt Romney also withdrew from RGGI while he was governor of Massachusetts—although it was before trading had begun and the state later re-joined.

Gov. Christie’s move was not a surprise. An early sign that New Jersey may pull our of RGGI came last year when, like a handful of other governors of deficit-strapped RGGI member states, Gov. Christie redirected $65 million raised from auctions of carbon credits for use in the general ledger.

All that said, RGGI continues to operate, with its next quarterly auction dated June 8. Nine states remain active in the trading pool. These are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. Pennsylvania acts as an “observer”, along with three Canadian provinces along the U.S. north-eastern border: Québec, New Brunswick, and Ontario.

It’s worth noting there are two other multi-state climate initiatives in North America. Both are less evolved than RGGI and both face similarly rocky political prospects. They are:

Western Climate Initiative, which includes 11 U.S. and Canadian regions, is larger than RGGI and is slated to come on line in 2015. Its goal: to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 15% by 2020, from a 2005 base.
Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Accord includes six more heavily industrialized U.S. states and one Canadian province, but is the least evolved of the three.

Check out the original post here: http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/community/blogs/authors/adamaston/2011/06/06/new-jersey-pulls-out-multi-state-greenhouse-gas-trading

Global CCS Institute

Exploring alternative ways to capture carbon using enzymes | Global CCS Institute

2011-05-04 Adam Aston

CO₂ Solution, in Quebec City, Canada is continuing its work to develop biology-based carbon capture technologies with Codexis, based in Redwood City, Calif.

The renewed partnership between CO₂Solution and Codexis, helped pave the way for the duo to establish a collaboration agreement with an unnamed global leader in energy and infrastructure projects. The collaboration agreement covers the development and testing of a pilot scale system for coal-fired power plants.

The process being developed by CO₂ Solution and Codexis is adapted from a naturally occurring enzyme, carbonic anhydrase, which occurs in humans and other mammals and plays a crucial role in the transfer of carbon dioxide from out blood streams into the lungs to be released during process.

By adapting the enzyme to work within a heavy-duty reactor that can soak up carbon dioxide from industrial and power plant exhaust, the company has created a sort of “industrial lung”. Once the carbon dioxide is captured, the enzyme also assists in concentrating the gas into a pure stream, so it can be stored underground or used in oil recovery.

According to Codexis, its enzymes are functional and stable in relatively inexpensive and energy-efficient solvents for 24 hours at temperatures up to 75 degrees Celsius. In its natural state, the enzyme doesn’t function at these sorts of temperatures; it must do so to be able to process hot exhaust gases from power plants or factories.

The company anticipates that once its enzymes are fully developed, the solvents can cut the energy needed to capture CO₂ within a plant by 30%. This improvement, says Codexis, can help lower the cost burden posed by carbon capture to 35% more than conventional power, a significant improvement over than the 80% premium current processes add.

The newly-extended joint development agreement between CO₂ Solution and Codexis now lasts until June 30, 2012, or six months after the expiry of any third-party collaborations, whichever is later.

via globalccsinstitute.com

Global CCS Institute

Could natural gas emissions exceed coal? The case for gas with CCS | Global CCS Institute

2011-04-21 Adam Aston

Though natural gas extracted from shale is the fastest growing energy source for power plants in the U.S., shale gas is now facing fresh challenges, with the release of a new study suggesting the fuel’s carbon intensity is as high as or higher than coal’s.

Given the rapid growth of natural gas, the findings could upend a consensus view that it’s a greener alternative to coal. The natural gas industry maintains that the fuel emits only about half the CO₂ of coal, and therefore has promise as a “bridge” from today’s carbon-intensive fuel mix to future low-carbon options. The new findings suggest that, if natural gas emissions are undercounted, there’s greater urgency to develop CCS for natural gas plants, alongside coal.

Already, the low cost of natural gas—along with its low emissions of conventional air pollutants—has led many utilities to shutter older, dirtier coal plants and replace them with gas turbines. Earlier this week, for instance, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) agreed to a landmark deal with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to shutter 11 of its most polluting coal plants, replacing some with natural gas.

Yet if shale gas is as carbon intensive as coal, the results of swapouts like these could cause greenhouse gas emissions to actually rise.

“Compared to coal, the footprint of shale gas is at least 20 percent greater and perhaps more than twice as great on the 20-year horizon and is comparable when compared over 100 years,” Robert Howarth, a Cornell ecologist writes in a pre-publication version of the paper, originally obtained by The Hill newspaper, and which can be viewed here.

The gist of Howarth’s findings has been made public in the past and are already being fiercely debated. The issue has been re-energized since the study is being published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, Climate Science, boosting their credibility.

It’s important to emphasize Howarth’s findings are based on natural gas extracted from shale reserves, rather than natural gas from conventional reserves.

That said, prior analysis, including one by the EPA, have put to the test claims that natural gas emits 50% less green house gases than coal, as is often claimed. Earlier this year, as detailed by ProPublica, the EPA issued analysis (see the report here) that methane leakage during transmission and processing may cut in half the advantage that is frequently attributed to natural gas.

Howarth and his colleagues—Anthony Ingraffea and Renee Santoro, also at Cornell—contend the process of hydraulic fracturing releases far more methane than conventional drilling. When fluids, which are pumped into the well to crack open shale and release the gas, resurface to be reused, they release large volumes of methane, according to the study. Howarth is quoted by the New York Times, saying:

“…we came up with two things that surprised me. First, I expected the indirect CO2 emissions from trucks moving frac water, the compressors, the drills, etc., to be greater than we found. They are actually pretty small, when you add up all the numbers. And second, the influence of methane is greater than I expected…”

Howarth’s finding could fuel critics of shale gas, especially in Northeast US states, where public anxiety is rising that fracking threatens underground sources of fresh water.

via globalccsinstitute.com

Global CCS Institute

US Senator Bingaman aims to jump-start CCS with a bill addressing liability | Global CCS Institute

2011-04-13 Adam Aston

All but lost in the din in the effort to pass a federal budget, a bi-partisan senate bill has re-surfaced that breathes fresh hope for U.S. federal support for carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS.

Introduced on March 31, and authored by Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the bill addresses the central question of liability facing new CCS projects.

While carbon dioxide has been used for decades for enhanced recovery in oil bearing rock formations, less is known about how the gas will behave in salt and other geological formations being considered for CCS.

“The liability question is one of the main impediments for the technology to penetrate more widely,” said Salo Zalemyer, an attorney at Bracewell & Giuliani Environmental Strategies Group in Washington who I spoke with about the bill’s prospects.

“And ultimately that technology hasn’t been adequately tested out yet.” Without some liability shield in place, at least for early movers, progress will be slowed, he said.

Senate bill S.699 authorizes the Energy Dept to set up agreements, providing technical and financial support, for up to ten large-scale CCS projects. Qualified projects would inject at least 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from industrial sources.

David Wagner, a lawyer at Environmental Law Review points out, that besides laying out liability terms, the bill also outlines procedures for long-term management of CCS sites:

To pave the way, proposed bill offers liability protection and federal indemnification for the CCS demonstration projects. Under the bill, DOE is authorized to indemnify projects up to $10 billion for personal, property and environmental damages that might be above what is covered by insurance or other financial assurance measures. Upon receiving the closure certificate for the injection site, the site may be turned over to the federal government for long-term site management and ownership. The proposed bill also outlines criteria for site closure certification and includes provisions for siting the demonstration projects on public land. In addition, it would establish and fund a CCS training program for state regulators.

The bill enjoys bi-partisan support from other Senators from big energy states. In addition to Bingaman, DemocratJay Rockefeller (West Virginia) signed on. The Republican co-sponsors are John Barasso (Wyoming) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).

Prospects for passage are typically murky at this early stage.

This is Bingaman’s second try with CCS: The proposed law is similar to a bill he sponsored in 2009. With bipartisan co-sponsors S. 1013 made it out of committee to the Senate floor, but didn’t make the cut with a broader energy legislative package later that year.

Bingaman’s 2011 do-over version has been referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and if it proceeds would next face a public hearing at an uncertain date in the future.

Officially, S.699 is titled: “A bill to authorize the Secretary of Energy to carry out a program to demonstrate the commercial application of integrated systems for long-term geological storage of carbon dioxide, and for other purposes.”

Check out the full text here, S.699.IS.

via globalccsinstitute.com

Global CCS Institute

Capturing carbon with sawdust | Global CCS Institute

2011-04-11 Adam Aston

Dead plants may work as well as living plants in mopping up carbon dioxide from admissions, a duo of Spanish scientists has found.

Reporting for the Royal Society of Chemistry on Mar 18, Yaundi Li writes that sawdust is showing promise as a porous solid, able to absorb carbon dioxide in its pores. Other solids, such as zeolites, are already used in this way, but most are hard to fabricate and can absorb only about 3 mmol of carbon dioxide per gram (3mmol CO₂/g).

A research group at Spain’s National Institute of Carbon in Oviedo have been able to convert sawdust into a lower cost material that absorbs up to 50% more of the greenhouse gas per volume—potentially the largest ever carbon uptake at room temperature, in fact.

I’ll leave it to Yi to describes the process:

The two step synthesis involves hydrothermal carbonisation of the sawdust, creating a hydrochar, which is then activated using potassium hydroxide. The KOH treatment creates pores in the sawdust structure by oxidation of carbon and carbon gasification from K₂CO₃ decomposition. These pores are responsible for the material’s uptake capabilities, bestowing it with a capacity as high as 4.8mmol CO₂/g. In addition, [the] material has good selectivity for CO₂ over N₂, fast adsorption rates and can be easily regenerated.

More work must be done in advance of commercialization. But the find is promising given that raw material is plentiful and the fabrication process is “not complex” according to Antonio Fuertes, the lead researcher, as quoted in the article.

Caption: Magnified image of sawdust before (left) and after
(right) being heated and activated showing the pores, via RSC.org.

For the serious carbon scientists I know we have here in the GCCSI community, I waited until the end for the serious technical stuff, so as not to scare off too many layfolk. Here’s the abstract for Sevilla and Fuertes’ study. For more, click here to go to the full journal citation at Energy & Environmental Science.

Sustainable porous carbons have been prepared by chemical activation of hydrothermally carbonized polysaccharides (starch and cellulose) and biomass (sawdust). These materials were investigated as sorbents for CO₂ capture. The activation process was carried out under severe (KOH/precursor = 4) or mild (KOH/precursor = 2) activation conditions at different temperatures in the 600–800 °C range. Textural characterization of the porous carbons showed that the samples obtained under mild activating conditions exhibit smaller surface areas and pore sizes than those prepared by employing a greater amount of KOH. However, the mildly activated carbons exhibit a good capacity to store CO₂, which is mainly due to the presence of a large number of narrow micropores (<1 nm). A very high CO₂ uptake of 4.8 mmol·g^-1 (212 mg CO₂·g^-1) was registered at room temperature (25 °C) for a carbon activated at 600 °C using KOH/precursor = 2. To the best of our knowledge, this result constitutes the largest-ever recorded CO₂ uptake at room temperature for any activated carbon. Furthermore, we observedthat these porous carbons have fast CO₂ adsorption rates, a good selectivity for CO₂–N₂ separation and they can be easily regenerated.

via globalccsinstitute.com

NRDC OnEarth

PODCAST What Can We Do With All That CO2? | OnEarth

2011-03-22 Adam Aston

You can’t see it, smell it, or taste it, but there’s carbon dioxide in the air all around us. And each day, we’re producing more of it.

For the past 60 years, scientists have been measuring the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels (along with rapid deforestation around the planet) sends billions of tons of CO2 into the air each year, and the extra greenhouse gas is causing average global temperatures to climb. To slow down rising temperatures, or stabilize them, scientists say carbon emissions need to be dramatically reduced and eventually brought to zero.

Of course, using carbon-free sources of energy, such as wind and solar, is an obvious way to cut emissions. But the world’s growing energy demands can’t yet be met with renewables and other carbon-free energy, and it will probably be decades before that technology is affordable and widespread. In the meantime, what can we do with all that extra CO2?

In this episode of the Climopedia podcast, Climate Central and OnEarth look at ideas for reducing CO2 concentrations. Columbia University’s Klaus Lackner shares his thoughts on why carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is needed. OnEarth contributor Adam Aston describes new technology that can help scoop CO2 right out of the air (see his story on carbon trees). Finally, Princeton University’s Andrew Bocarsly explains how we might put some of that captured CO2 to good use.

via onearth.org

Check out my mellifluous stylings in the middle third of this short podcast: http://www.onearth.org/media/listen-what-to-do-with-co2

Global CCS Institute

Will nuclear fears shift development to renewables and CCS? | Global CCS Institute

2011-03-16 Adam Aston

A week into Japan’s triple tragedy—earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident—the implications are still unfolding. Analysts are beginning to map out how the nuclear accident could affect global energy trends for nuclear, conventional energy, and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Continue reading Will nuclear fears shift development to renewables and CCS? | Global CCS Institute →

Global CCS Institute

US clean energy stimulus spending starts slow: CCS funding last out of the gate | Global CCS Institute

2011-03-11 Adam Aston

In 2009, when newly elected President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, nearly $65 billion was allotted to fund green programs.

For the U.S.’s nascent clean energy industry, the funds were like finding fresh water on a long, parched journey. The funds promised to rejuvenate American cleantech industries, and help them catch-up with European players who had benefitted from more public funding, over a longer period. Continue reading US clean energy stimulus spending starts slow: CCS funding last out of the gate | Global CCS Institute →

Here’s how the authors put it…

Writer, editor, content advisor, creative leader – energy, climate | Chief storyteller at RMI | Co-founder of T Brand at The New York Times