GHG Monitor
4/24/2015
IN DOE
Ten million metric tons of carbon dioxide have successfully been captured and stored underground in Department of Energy carbon capture and storage projects, DOE announced this week. The programs contributing to the milestone are the Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (ICCS) Major Demonstrations program and the Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (RCSP) Initiative. The RCSP Initiative is made up of seven partnerships across different regions tasked with developing the best regional approaches for storing CO2. The ICCS program is tasked with developing CCS technologies that can be deployed to industrial sources. “The U.S. is taking the lead in showing the world CCS can work. We have made the largest government investment in carbon capture and storage of any nation, and these investments are being matched by private capital,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a DOE release. “We are showing that CCS is working now, and that it is indispensable to the DOE’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.”
IN THE INDUSTRY
The United States has seen an increase in energy-related carbon emissions for the second year in a row, the Energy Information Administration reported this week. According the EIA release, estimated emissions of energy-related CO2 in 2014 totaled 5,404 million tons, a growth rate of 0.7 percent. The EIA report notes, though, that “unlike 2013, when emissions and gross domestic product (GDP) grew at similar rates (2.5 [percent] and 2.2 [percent], respectively), 2014’s CO2 emissions growth rate of 0.7 [percent] was much smaller than the 2014 GDP growth rate of 2.4 [percent].”
