United States The US Department of Energy (DoE) has named the seven partnerships of state agencies, universities and private companies that will form the core of a nationwide network to help determine the best approaches for capturing and permanently storing greenhouse gases.
The US Department of Energy (DoE) has named the seven partnerships of state agencies, universities and private companies that will form the core of a nationwide network to help determine the best approaches for capturing and permanently storing greenhouse gases that can contribute to global climate change, and form a key part of president Bush’s global climate change initiative.
Together, the partnerships include over 140 organisations spanning 33 states, three Indian nations, and two Canadian provinces. In announcing the initiative last November, energy secretary Spencer Abraham said the partnerships would become “the centrepiece” of expanding federal efforts to investigate the potential for carbon sequestration.
The seven partnerships will evaluate which of the numerous sequestration approaches that have emerged in the last few years are best suited for their specific regions of the country. They will also begin studying possible regulations and infrastructure requirements for deploying sequestration on a wide scale.
The selected partnerships are: * West Coast regional partnership led by the California Energy Commission, and made up of representatives from Alaska, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
* Southwest Regional partnership, which will involve the efforts of 21 partners in eight states coordinated by the Western Governors’ Association and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
* Northern Rockies and Great Plains partnership, which will be headed by Montana State University, and will cover Idaho, Montana and South Dakota.
* Plains CO2 Reduction partnership which will extend across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and two Canadian provinces. It will be led by the Energy & Environmental Research Centre at Grand Forks.
* Midwest Geological Sequestration consortium, which will evaluate sequestration options in the Illinois Basin of Illinois, western Indiana, and western Kentucky. It will be led by the University of Illinois, Illinois State Geological Survey.
* Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration partnership, headed by Southern States Energy Board of Georgia, and involving Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
* Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration partnership, covering Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, and coordinated by the Battelle Memorial Institute of Ohio.
The DoE will provide $11.1 million to support the partnerships over the next two years. At the end of two years, the partnerships will recommend technologies for small-scale validation testing in a “Phase 2” competition expected to begin in late fiscal year 2005.