UW SER Project Selected for Funding Under DOE Regional Carbon Management Initiative

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources (SER) to lead a regional initiative for technical assistance partnerships to advance the deployment of basin-scale carbon transportation and storage.

With an anticipated $4.7 million from DOE, the planned $5.9 million Wyoming Technical Assistance Collaboration for Carbon Management (WYTAC-CM) project intends to build a comprehensive and intuitive central data repository of technical and nontechnical information to accelerate development of carbon storage projects in the Greater Green River Basin and Wind River Basin.

The three-year project aims to conduct a data aggregation campaign that will include technical inventories of CO₂ storage reservoirs and confining units; current and potential CO₂ sources; and current and pending CO₂ capture, transport and storage projects.

The project will be co-led by Dan Eakin and Lily Jackson, research professionals in SER's Center for Economic Geology Research (CEGR).

"This undertaking will enable present and future project development with stakeholders to more easily navigate the carbon management landscape by compiling a thorough collection of resources on a regional scale," Jackson says. "Carbon management and storage are relatively new concepts in the energy world, and teams are often reinventing the wheel when gathering pertinent information. We are prioritizing shared learning and best practices to hopefully bring the technology closer toward commercialization."

To address the increasingly complex project landscape, the WYTAC-CM team also plans to conduct an in-depth evaluation of the policy, regulatory and permitting issues within the Greater Green River Basin and Wind River Basin to flag potential challenges related to the implementation of basin-scale carbon transport and storage.

"Community engagement and policy analysis are increasingly important factors that need to support the technical advances if new carbon management solutions are to be successfully deployed," Eakin says. "Rather than focusing on the technical side only, the project will cover the multifaceted subject areas that will be necessary to complete a project all in one database."

At the completion of the project, the collated data resources will be made accessible to current and potential project developers, regulators, community advocacy groups, labor organizations and all of those seeking to develop and deploy carbon management projects in Wyoming.

"In addition to the admirable goal of streamlining carbon management resources, an exciting aspect of this project is that it will have wide-reaching impacts, led by two exceptional professionals among SER's research team," CEGR Director Fred McLaughlin says. "Southwest Wyoming is witnessing increasing interest in carbon capture and storage, and this project will serve as the connective tissue, enabling all stakeholders to collaborate effectively."

Additional partners and collaborators on the project include SER's 3D Visualization Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Carbon Solutions LLC and Colorado School of Mines.

For more information, email Christine Reed, SER outreach director, at [email protected].

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