Martin Schneider
GHG Monitor
4/25/2014
Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said this week that the Department of Energy expects to close loan guarantees on fossil, nuclear, renewable and efficiency projects this year, with a particular emphasis on fossil energy proposals submitted under an $8 billion loan guarantee solicitation earlier this year. “As we go forward with the loan program as aggressively as we can this year across the board we will continue to focus on what we would call the early mover deployments with the idea then that some of these at least will get picked up in the private sector,” Moniz said in April 23 remarks at the annual meeting of the U.S. Energy Association in Washington, D.C. “We don’t have the resources, frankly, or the interest to be the ones that kind of make the entire market. We want to get the first movers out there … see how they perform and how the private sector picks them up.”
In December, DOE issued an $8 billion solicitation for loan guarantees for fossil energy projects in four technology areas:
1. Advanced Resource Development—“Novel oil and gas drilling, stimulation, and completion technologies that avoid, reduce or sequester greenhouse gases; use of associated gas production to reduce flaring; coal-bed methane recovery to reduce methane emissions into the atmosphere associated with coal mining; underground coal gasification; and methane emissions capture from energy production, transmission, or distribution.”
2. Carbon Capture—“CO2 capture from synthesis gases in fuel reforming or gasification processes; CO2 capture from flue gases in traditional coal or natural gas electricity generation; and CO2 capture from effluent streams of industrial processing facilities.”
3. Low-Carbon Power Systems—“Coal or natural gas oxycombustion; chemical looping processes; hydrogen turbines; and synthetic gas, natural gas, or hydrogen-based fuel cells.”
4. Efficiency Improvements—“Combined heat and power; waste heat recovery; novel oil refining technologies high-efficiency distributed fossil power systems.” In addition, new language was added to the final solicitation that included “high temperature materials for fossil-based systems” in this category.
Responses were due in February and Moniz said DOE is actively reviewing the proposals now. “As we go forward, you can expect to see a stronger focus and emphasis on co-financing using these loan monies,” he said. “Because we are now living in a different world than we were four years ago in terms of how the financial markets are functioning. So I think we will see a lot of excitement there in moving forward this year and right now we are very actively looking at proposals that have come in, in particular … our call for fossil energy technologies that reduce emissions where we have put $8 billion into play.”
