11.30.16

Hoeven Announces $10 Million in Federal Funding for UND to Test Commercially-Viable CO2 Storage Technologies

WASHINGTON – Senator John Hoeven today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded two grants totaling $10 million to the Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) at the University of North Dakota (UND). The funds are made available through the DOE’s Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) initiative and will be used to study the feasibility of commercially-viable CO2 storage projects in North Dakota and Nebraska.

“For years, North Dakota has been a leader in developing technologies for the next generation of coal-fired power plants,” Hoeven said. “These efforts not only help us to continue producing affordable energy with better environmental stewardship, but they also help create good-paying jobs in our state’s energy industry. Today’s awards are the result of those years of work by the EERC, the Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership and others and will help to continue the advancement of commercially-viable methods for reducing emissions.”

As a member of the Senate Energy Committee and Energy Appropriations Subcommittee, Hoeven has worked to advance the state’s energy priorities, including clean coal technologies and research into carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Hoeven said today’s funding will complement such efforts in North Dakota, such as Project Tundra, a project to retrofit existing power plants for CCS.

To further this work, the senator helped to pass the Energy Policy Modernization Act. The Senate bill would authorize $610 million annually for a new Coal Technology Program to advance large-scale CCS demonstration projects and is currently in conference committee.

-###-