Round Three for Clean Coal

The US Department of Energy announced today it is planning a new round of its Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI).

Additionally, the Office of Fossil Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory today published a Notice of Intent to issue a funding opportunity announcement for Round Three of the CCPI.

The CCPI is a cost-sharing partnership between the government and industry to demonstrate advanced coal-based electric power generation technologies.

CCPI Round Three specifically targets advanced coal-based systems and subsystems that capture or separate carbon dioxide for sequestration or beneficial reuse.

Round Three is also open to any coal-based advanced carbon capture technologies that result in co-benefits with respect to efficiency, environmental, or economic improvements potentially capable of achieving CCPI coal technology performance levels specified in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

DOE is interested in demonstrating advanced technologies not currently deployed in the marketplace; specifically, technologies capable of producing electricity in any combination with heat, fuels, chemicals, hydrogen or other useful by-products.

Prospective projects must ensure that coal is used for at least 75 per cent of the fuel energy input to the process, while electricity is at least 50 per cent of the energy-equivalent output from the technology demonstrated.

DOE is currently developing large scale geologic sequestration field tests on the order of one million metric tons of CO2 per year. The DOE is specifically interested in industry input on the best way to structure Round Three to allow demonstration projects under CCPI to integrate with ongoing sequestration field tests, which may already be fully operational by the time the new CCPI projects come on-line.