The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) announced that it will award up to $890 million to projects at three natural gas and coal-fired power plants, aimed at demonstrating carbon capture, transport and storage technologies to reduce emissions from the plants.

According to the DOE, the three projects, located in California, North Dakota, and Texas, have the potential to reduce 7.75 million metric tons of emissions from the power plants annually.

The awards form part of the OCED’s Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects Program. Launched in 2022, the $2.5 billion program aims to help accelerate the demonstration and deployment of carbon management technologies, with a focus on integrated carbon capture, transport, and storage technologies and infrastructure that can be replicated and implemented at fossil energy power plants and major industrial sources of CO2, such as cement pulp and paper, iron and steel, and chemical production facilities.

The program is funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which allocates approximately $6.5 billion over five years in funding to carbon management projects and initiatives.

The projects selected include the Texas-based Baytown Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Project, which seeks to capture carbon from a natural gas combined-cycle power plant for capture and storage in sites on the Gulf Coast, and is exploring the use of re-used greywater, instead of freshwater, for cooling; Project Tundra in North Dakota, which plans to capture carbon from the Milton R. Young Station coal-fired power plant for permanent storage in saline geologic formations beneath and around the plant, and; the Sutter Decarbonization Project in Yuba City, California, which aims to utilize a new air-cooling system to eliminate the use of cooling water and significantly minimize freshwater usage at a planned commercial-scale carbon capture system at the Sutter Energy Center natural gas combined-cycle power plant.

The project awards include up to $270 million for the Baytown CCS Project, estimated to be able to capture up to 2 million metric tons of CO2 annually, up to $350 million for Project Tundra, with planned annual carbon capture capacity of 4 million metric tons, and up to $270 million for the Sutter Decarbonization Project, aimed at capturing up to 1.75 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Calpine subsidiaries are the prime contractors on both the Baytown and Sutter projects, while Dakota Carbon Center East Project LLC is the prime contractor for Project Tundra.

In a statement announcing the project selections, the OCED said:

“DOE estimates that reaching President Biden’s ambitious plan for a net-zero emissions economy will require capturing and storing between 400 million and 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2 from emissions sources annually by 2050. Selected projects, once completed, will help reduce emissions from the power sector, which accounts for more than a quarter of U.S. carbon emissions.”