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4 Houston companies snag DOE funding for carbon advancement
Four Houston companies have captured more than $45 million in federal funding to promote the capture, transportation, use, and storage of tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
The U.S. Department of Energy on May 17 announced funding for these four Houston companies:
- BP Corporation North America Inc. — $33,411,193. The money will be earmarked for two commercial-scale storage sites along the Texas Gulf Coast. The sites will be able to ultimately store up to 15 million metric tons of CO2 per year.
- Timberlands Sequestration LLC — $23,779,020. The funding will go toward a biomass carbon removal and storage project for the Alabama River Cellulose pulp and paper mill in Monroe County, Alabama. Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific LLC owns the mill.
- Magnolia Sequestration Hub LLC — $21,570,784. The money will help finance the Magnolia Sequestration Hub in Allen Parish, Louisiana, with an estimated 300 million metric tons of total CO2 storage capacity. Magnolia is a subsidiary of Houston-based Occidental Petroleum Corp.
- Bluebonnet Sequestration Hub LLC — $16,480,117. The funding will be spent on development of the Bluebonnet Sequestration Hub along the Texas Gulf Coast, with the potential for more than 350 million metric tons of CO2 storage capacity. Bluebonnet is a subsidiary of Occidental.
Another Texas company received $3 million in Department of Energy (DOE) funding. Howard Midstream Energy Partners LLC of San Antonio will perform a study for a system capable of moving up to 250 million metric tons of CO2 per year from numerous sources to storage sites on the Gulf Coast — from the Port of Corpus Christi to the Mississippi River.
In all, the Department of Energy announced $251 million in funding for 12 projects in seven states aimed at bolstering the U.S. carbon management capabilities. The money comes from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was enacted in 2021.
“Thanks to historic clean energy investments, DOE is building out the infrastructure needed to slash harmful carbon pollution from industry and the power sector, revitalize local economies, and unlock enormous public health benefits,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says in a news release.
DOE says carbon dioxide emissions are fueling global warming, which has heightened the threat of droughts, severe fires, rising sea levels, floods, catastrophic storms, and declining biodiversity.
Precedence Research estimates the value of the global market for carbon capture and storage was $4.91 billion in 2022, and it expects the market value to reach $35.7 billion by 2032.
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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.
Pieremanuele Canepa, Robert Welch assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH, is leading a research project that can change the effectiveness of sodium-ion batteries. Photo courtesy of UH