Colorado CCS Project Gets $1.5mn in Federal Funding

The US department of energy has awarded $1.5mn in federal funding to a commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Colorado, France's Total and other partners in the scheme said on  September 17.

An initial scoping study on the project, LH CO2MENT, was completed in June. The federal funds will pay for a feasibility study on the planned facility, expected to capture up to 2mn metric tons/yr of CO₂ directly from the Holcim cement plant and the gas-fired steam generator. The CO₂ will be sequestered underground by Occidental, whose Oxy Low Carbon Ventures subsidiary is also a project partner.

The other participants are CCS developer Svante, LafargeHolcim, owner of the cement plant, and construction firm Kiewit Engineering Group.

“Oxy Low Carbon Ventures is leveraging Occidental’s 40 years of experience in securely storing CO₂ in geologic formations to advance permanent sequestration as a solution that supports global emissions reduction efforts through carbon retirement," Oxy Lower Carbon Ventures' president Richard Jackson said. "This partnership is a powerful example of how cross-industry collaboration can help progress carbon capture, utilisation and storage projects that will be critical to accelerating the transition to a lower-carbon world."

"Total brings its experience in this new phase of feasibility to support the development of Svante’s promising CO₂ capture technology," its chief technology officer Marie-Noelle Semeria said. "Together with our industrial partners and thanks to public-private initiative, we aim at accelerating the deployment, at scale, of innovative and cost-efficient technologies, contributing to decarbonise industry and curb CO2 emissions."

The carbon-capture facility will use Svante's solid sorbent technology to capture the carbon directly from the kiln, while Kiewit will lead engineering development. Svante, Total and LafargeHolcim are also working together at a pilot project to capture and store CO₂ from the Lafarge Richmond cement plant in Canada. 

The funding was part of a broader $72mn investment in various CCS-related projects the DoE announced on September. 1.