Pelican Renewables LLC (Stockton, California) will receive $45,221,386 in CarbonSafe grant funding for its Pelican Carbon Sequestration Hub through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The DOE Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management announced Round 3 project selections for its Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA 2711) Carbon Storage Validation and Testing –CarbonSafe.
Environmental engineers, geologists, and hydro-geologists at SCS Engineers collaborated with the Pelican team to prepare their DOE grant submission for feasibility and sustainability. SCS Engineers was responsible for the Class VI Permit Application Submittal that made possible the grant application, assisted with the preparation of the grant application itself, and will be performing engineering and scientific analyses that support the site characterization process.
The Pelican Carbon Sequestration Hub will be a regional carbon dioxide (CO2) storage hub at the island of Rindge Tract in the eastern portion of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California. The hub will be accessible by barge and from the Port of Stockton. The Port of Stockton is accessible by rail. CarbonSafe funding supports the front-end engineering design work for the barge CO2 transport system and related infrastructure. Pelican will also evaluate its candidate CO2 sources from a techno-economic standpoint and examine environmental, energy equity, environmental justice, and social-license-to-operate criteria.
To provide the safety and security information to apprise Class VI injection well permitting and to prepare the plan for subsequent development of the storage field, the Pelican team will undertake environmental review work and seek to obtain other necessary permits. Three characterization wells on Rindge Tract and a suite of logs, tests, measurements, and analyses will help characterize three target sandstone formations and their seals while optimizing the potential for stacked storage at the site.
To achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century, the U.S. is working toward capturing, transporting, and permanently storing hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year. Working with firms such as Pelican Renewables LLC, the DOE provides grants to build the infrastructure to store large quantities of carbon dioxide in geologic storage facilities. All facilities or CO2 hubs are designed, built, monitored, and operated safely and responsibly, meeting all federal, state, and local regulatory laws.
Projects such as the Pelican Carbon Sequestration Hub will expand the nation’s CO2 storage infrastructure needed to significantly and responsibly reduce CO2 emissions from industrial operations and power plants, as well as from legacy emissions in the atmosphere. Large-scale, responsible deployment of carbon management technologies is crucial to meeting the U.S. climate goal of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
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In August, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced nearly $34 million in funding for 11 projects that will support high-impact research and development to improve and produce biofuels, biopower, and bioproducts. These biomass resources, otherwise known as feedstocks, can be produced by municipal solid waste (MSW) streams and algae and converted into low-carbon fuels that can significantly contribute to the decarbonization of transportation sectors that face barriers to electrification, like aviation and marine.
Transportation accounts for approximately 30% of total U.S. energy consumption and generates the largest share of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Biofuels serve as a low-carbon alternative to petroleum and can also be used to produce carbon-heavy products like plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, and industrial chemicals.
Among the DOE recipients is a team led by Stephanie Lansing, professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Technology at the University of Maryland (UMD). Lansing is leading a consortium of scientists and industry partners to research innovative ways to use waste and to make value-added products that will contribute to the sustainability of our economy and planet.
SCS Engineers is an environmental engineering firm specializing in waste management and renewable energy from waste products. SCS is on the Lansing team focusing on biofuel production. The team includes Ohio State University, Mississippi State University, Virginia Tech, Idaho National Lab, and Quasar Energy Group. Their first task is to conduct a waste characterization study across every U.S. region during every season of the year, to understand how location and the time of year affect landfills’ incoming waste. The results help determine what the biofuel potential of that waste is.
Another Lansing team will be working toward producing bioplastics that are made without using fossil fuels and degrade much more easily than current plastic products.
The biofuel and bioplastic projects involve sustainability and economic assessments comparing them to current products on the market to see how marketable these new products can be. And the reason why Lansing’s comprehensive teams are important; they will help commercialize any new products.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm stated in the DOE August 3 press release, “The companies and universities leading these projects will ensure that our cutting-edge biofuel technologies reduce carbon emissions, create new jobs up and down the supply chain, and are made in America by American workers.”
More information about Solid Waste Management and Biofuels.