ARPA-E FUNDS FOUR CARBON CAPTURE PROJECTS UNDER NEWEST ROUND OF GRANTS

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
11/30/12

The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is shelling out more than $10 million for a new round of carbon capture technology development projects, the Department announced this week, including $3 million to formulate a material that can convert captured CO2, sunlight and water into fuel. DOE said Nov. 28 that it will be allocating $130 million worth of grants to 66 new energy technology ventures, including four for carbon capture projects. They are: 

• Dioxide Materials, Inc.—$3.99 million for the Illinois-based company to develop a technology that will electrochemically convert CO2 captured from power plants into industrial chemicals and transportation fuels in a way that improves efficiency and reduces required energy input;
• University of Massachusetts, Lowell—$3 million to formulate a metal catalyst that converts captured CO2, sunlight and water into fuel via a process known as plasmonic-enhanced photocatalysis. The catalyst can focus sunlight to cause a chemical reaction that produces precursors to transportation fuel;
• University of Pittsburgh—$2.4 million to craft a compound that can increase the viscosity of liquid CO2. That thickened compound could help improve the performance of CO2 floods via enhanced oil recovery and replace water as a fluid for hydraulic fracturing; and
• Arizona State University—$612,000 to develop an electrochemical technology that can efficiently capture CO2 from power plants that could cut the energy use and cost in half compared to current technologies.

Those four projects will now be added to a list of roughly two dozen carbon capture projects that have been funded by ARPA-E over the last three years. In an interview with GHG Monitor this summer, ARPA-E Assistant Program Director Karma Sawyer, who manages the program’s portfolio of carbon capture projects, said that the $50 million spent within the subject area has been a “good value” that has helped lower the costs and energy penalties associated with carbon capture. “We chose these kinds of crazy ideas at the beginning of our program and made them so that they don’t seem quite as crazy by answering the major questions—that way it becomes more palatable for people to take these different approaches more seriously in the more applied spaces of the energy field,” Sawyer said. However, not all of the carbon capture projects within ARPA-E’s portfolio have been successful. Earlier this year, the program rescinded funding for electrochemical and enzyme analogue-induced capture projects that failed to reach project milestones.

Budget Remains Uncertain for ARPA-E

The 66 new projects are receiving funding under ARPA-E’s second open call for projects. DOE said the program, which is modeled after the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has funded 285 “high risk, high reward” projects with more than $770 million since it began accepting proposals in 2009. The program, though, faces some uncertainty surrounding its funding allocation for the rest of Fiscal Year 2013. While the Obama Administration proposed a 27 percent budget increase for FY2013 above the program’s currently enacted level to $350 million, the House passed a budget that allocates only $200 million for the program. The Senate version of the bill that passed the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year allocates $312 million for the program. Under the current stop-gap spending measure, which is valid through the end of March, ARPA-E’s funding remains stagnant at its enacted $275 million level.