Innovation & Infrastructure

Jeremy L. Dillon WC Monitor 10/2/2015 Parsons anticipates finalizing construction of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River Site by April 2016 at a total cost of $475 million, Project Manager Frank Sheppard said this week at the Department of Energy’s National Cleanup Workshop in Arlington, Va. That would bring the project […]

Jeremy L. Dillon NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The National Nuclear Security Administration said this week it has entered into a new cooperative agreement to help finance General Atomics’ molybdenum-99 production technology. The agreement, including a $9.7 million cost-share contribution, marks the fifth such agreement the NNSA has entered into with companies seeking to produce the medical […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 10/2/2015 The House of Representatives passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2016 yesterday in a 270-156 vote that authorizes President Barack Obama’s total $611.9 billion request for defense discretionary spending. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill next week before sending it to […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 10/2/2015 Mississippi Power, a subsidy of Southern Co., this week reported an additional $15 million in cost overages at the Kemper County Energy Facility in its monthly status report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The report attributes the extra $15 million in the total estimated cost to “additional […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 10/2/2015 The Department of Energy this week returned to the U.S. Treasury Department $1.27 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds earmarked for carbon capture and storage projects. This sum consists of unspent money from four different projects, one that was shut down and three that were unable to […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 10/2/2015 NRG Energy and Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) have teamed up with nonprofit public competition organization XPRIZE to launch a $20 million carbon utilization innovation competition. The NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, which is open to the public, consists of two competition tracks, one that will test developmental technologies […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 10/2/2015 The National Nuclear Security Administration said this week it has entered into a new cooperative agreement to help finance General Atomics’ molybdenum-99 production technology. The agreement, including a $9.7 million cost-share contribution, marks the fifth such agreement the NNSA has entered into with companies seeking to produce the medical […]

Eighteen projects from National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) labs have been chosen by an independent panel of judges as finalists for R&D Magazine’s annual R&D 100 Awards, which recognizes “the 100 most innovative technologies and services of the past year,” the NNSA announced last week. Several Los Alamos National Laboratory projects are finalists, including the lab’s […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/25/2015 A group of Senate Democrats led by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) this week released an energy bill that includes a provision that would add carbon utilization and storage efforts to a section of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) that prioritizes fossil energy research and development efforts within […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/25/2015 The European Union can support progress toward the deployment of carbon capture and storage by optimizing existing policies and resources, according to a report released this week by the Zero Emissions Platform, an advisory group to the European Commission on the subject. The plan, developed by request of European […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/25/2015 Summit Power, developer of the Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP), will not meet the Sept. 30 spending deadline for $104 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding, a company executive acknowledged this week. TCEP was awarded a grand total of $211 million in ARRA funding and was able […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/25/2015 British power producer Drax said on Friday it has withdrawn from the White Rose carbon capture and storage project. The project is currently under development by Capture Power Ltd., a consortium of Drax, Alstom, and BOC. White Rose will still be located at the Drax power plant in Yorkshire […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/25/2015 Three new carbon capture processes are due to begin testing at Norway’s Technology Center Mongstad (TCM), according to a new release by Clean Carbon Solutions Ltd. (CCSL), a capture solvent developer and one of TCM’s new vendors. The other two vendors, Alstom and General Electric, are receiving funding through […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/25/2015 What once seemed a very promising future for carbon capture and storage has fallen by the wayside due to a lack of market development, but all is not lost, according to MIT Senior Research Engineer Howard Herzog. “The number one reason for CCS not meeting the expectations of 2009 […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 9/18/2015 A renewed emphasis is being placed on technology development for Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management projects, Monica Regalbuto said during her first visit to Hanford after being confirmed as the new assistant DOE secretary for environmental management. The projects have reaped benefits from significant past investments in technology […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/18/2015 A catalytic material known to show potential for capturing carbon can also be adapted for the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide (CO), a value-added product, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found. The research focuses on adapting covalent […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/18/2015 The Department of Energy this week announced the selection of five projects to receive more than $7 million in funding to study the feasibility of enhanced water recovery (EWR). A relatively new process, EWR aims to use captured CO2 to extract brine from geologic storage sites. Through the management […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/11/2015 Alberta’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC) will provide CAD$15 million in funding for projects related to the innovate use of carbon dioxide, the independent, not-for-profit organization announced his week. The funding competition is the second round of CCEMC’s “Grand Challenge,” a three-round program providing a total of […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/11/2015 While significant progress has been made toward the wide-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage technology in the four years since the release of the last Quadrennial Technology Review, many opportunities for further learning and developing exist, according to the latest QTR, released this week. “The ability to take […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 9/11/2015 Department of Energy (DOE) cybersecurity was breached 159 times out of a total of 1,131 cyberattack attempts from 2010 to 2014, USA TODAY reported yesterday upon obtaining incident reports from the agency through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). According to the report, attackers were able to access “administrative privileges […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 9/11/2015 The Department of Energy’s (DOE) mismanagement of email records, which has “remained largely unresolved” since a 2010 review first identified recordkeeping problems, "could significantly impact [DOE’s] ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, ongoing litigation, or law enforcement efforts,” the DOE Inspector General (IG) said in a report […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/11/2015 Carbon captured from power generation or industrial sources can be injected into offshore geological storage formations in multiple sites safely if done correctly, according to a report released this week by Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage (SCCS). “The results of CO2 MultiStore research have also highlighted how use of […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/11/2015 In hopes of accelerating deployment of carbon capture and storage technology, BHP Billiton and SaskPower this week signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreeing to share access to data, information and lessons learned at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam CCS project. The Boundary Dam project, which reached full operation in October […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/11/2015 The potential leakage of carbon dioxide into marine environments from sub-seabed storage locations could have significant effects on marine environments due to a decrease in viral production, according to a report published this week in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology. “Our experiment provides evidence, for the first time, that […]

Alissa Tabirian WC Monitor 9/11/2015 The Department of Energy’s (DOE) mismanagement of email records, which has “remained largely unresolved” since a 2010 review first identified recordkeeping problems, "could significantly impact [DOE’s] ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, ongoing litigation, or law enforcement efforts,” the DOE Inspector General (IG) said in a report […]

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) ineffective management of its email records, including its "inability to archive and retrieve email records could significantly impact [DOE’s] ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, ongoing litigation, or law enforcement efforts,” the DOE Inspector General (IG) said in a report released yesterday. The DOE and the National […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/4/2015 Mississippi Power this week reported an additional $25 million in cost overages at the Kemper County Energy Facility in its monthly status report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The report, which tallies costs through July 2015, attributes the extra$25 million in the total project budget to “additional […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/4/2015 The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory this week announced the selection of eight projects to receive $24.7 million in combined funding for small- and large-scale pilot projects on reducing the cost of carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and compression. Funding will be provided through DOE’s Carbon Capture […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 9/4/2015 After more than 1,000 hours of operation at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, near Montreal, Québec, CO2 Solutions’ carbon capture demonstration project continues to perform as anticipated, the company reported this week. “The results to date have fully met our expectations, and we are confident that the experience gathered in this demonstration will […]