The President’s Financial Year 2016 budget requests $560 million for the fossil energy research and development (FER&D) portfolio. FE leads Federal research, development, and demonstration efforts on advanced carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to facilitate achievement of the President’s climate goals. FE also conducts R&D related to prudent and sustainable development of our unconventional domestic resources.
CCS Demonstrations
FER&D manages the Clean Coal Power Initiative program along with two American Recovery and Reinvestment Act CCS demonstration programs: FutureGen 2.0 and the Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage program under the CCS Demos program.
Carbon Capture & Storage and Power Systems
The CCS and Power Systems program conducts research to reduce carbon emissions by improving the performance and efficiency of CCS technologies and of fossil energy systems integrated with CCS. The FY 2016 budget request for the program is $369.4 million. It also includes $34 million for NETL staff to conduct in-house fossil energy R&D.
Carbon Capture
The President’s FY 2016 budget requests $116.6 million for carbon capture R&D. The Carbon Capture activity is focused on the development of post-combustion and pre-combustion CO2 capture and compression technologies for new and existing coal and natural gas-fired power plants and industrial sources. Post-combustion CO2 capture technology R&D is focused on capturing CO2 from flue gas after the fuel has been consumed/combusted. Pre-combustion CO2 capture is applicable to systems that capture and separate the CO2 from mixed gas streams prior to combustion or utilization of the gas. The FY 2016 Budget Request funds a new emphasis on optimizing carbon capture on natural gas systems, funds ongoing projects, and proceeds to larger scale pilot tests of technologies on both coal and natural gas. These efforts will support the program’s commitment to deliver a demonstration project that captures and stores >75 percent of the carbon emissions from a natural gas power system of at least 50 MWe capacity by 2020 using what has been determined to be the best available carbon capture technology available for demonstration at the time.
Carbon Storage
President’s FY 2016 budget requests $108.8 million for carbon storage R&D. The overall goal of the Carbon Storage Program is to develop and validate technologies to ensure safe and permanent geologic storage of captured CO2. Development and validation of these technologies is critical to ensure stakeholders have the capability to assess, monitor and mitigate storage risks for CO2, and ensure the viability of carbon storage as an effective technology solution that can be implemented on a large-scale to mitigate carbon emissions.
Advanced Energy Systems (AES)
The President’s FY 2016 budget requests $39.4 million for advanced energy systems R&D. The AES mission is to increase the availability and efficiency of fossil energy systems integrated with CO2 capture, while maintaining the highest environmental standards at the lowest cost. The program elements focus on oxy-combustion, advanced turbines, gasification, and solid oxide fuel cells.
Cross-cutting Research
The President’s FY 2016 budget requests $51.2 million for crosscutting research. The Program serves as a bridge between basic and applied research by targeting concepts that offer the potential for transformational breakthroughs and step change benefits in the way energy systems are designed, constructed, and operated. In addition, the Cross-cutting Research Program leads efforts that support University-based energy research including science and engineering education at minority colleges and universities.
Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Technology
The Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Technology’s (sCO2) $19.3 million request supports the Department’s sCO2 crosscut which is focused on technology development for supercritical carbon dioxide-based power conversion cycles. These cycles can be applied to most heat sources, including fossil, nuclear, solar and geothermal applications, while offering significant improvements in efficiency, cost, footprint, and water use. FER&D’s ultimate goal is a directly-fired supercritical CO2 fuel cycle which could also significantly reduce the costs of carbon capture and storage. The major thrusts of the crosscut are a coordinated R&D effort in high temperature technology development/component validation, and the Supercritical Transformational Electric Power Generation (STEP) initiative to design, construct and operate a 10MW pilot test bed.