The goal of the Carbon Storage Program of the U.S. Department of Energy is to develop and advance both onshore and offshore carbon storage technologies that will significantly improve the effectiveness of the technology, reduce the cost of implementation, and be ready for widespread commercial deployment in the 2025-2035 timeframe. The objective of this announcement is to secure applications that will support efforts to develop technologies that utilize CO2 from coal-fired power plants as a reactant to produce useful products without generating additional CO2 or greenhouse gas emissions validated via a product Life Cycle Analysis.
The Environmental Engineering program is part of the Environmental Engineering and Sustainability cluster together with 1) the Biological and Environmental Interactions of Nanoscale Materials program and 2) the Environmental Sustainability program. Environmental engineering is an interdisciplinary field that applies chemical, biological, and physical scientific principles to protect human and ecological health. The goal of the Environmental Engineering program is tosupport potentially transformative fundamental research that applies scientific and engineering principles to 1) prevent or minimize solid, liquid, and gaseous discharges of pollution to soil, water, and air; 2) mitigate the ecological and human-health impacts of such releases by smart/adaptive/reactive amendments or manipulation of the environment, and 3) remediate polluted environments through engineered chemical, biological, and/or geo-physical processes. Integral to achieving these goals is a fundamental understanding of the transport and biogeochemical reactivity of pollutants in the environment. Therefore, research on environmental micro/biology, environmental chemistry, and environmental geophysics may be relevant providing there is a clear connection to the application of environmental engineering to protect human and ecological health.