By Tim Pearce

October 18, 2017 - The Department of Energy (DOE) is pouring $26 million into carbon capture technology to cut emissions from America’s coal and natural gas plants, the agency announced Tuesday.

The funds will go toward projects in the DOE’s Carbon Capture Program “to develop the next generation of advanced CO2 capture concepts” under the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), according to the NETL website.

This current round of funding will focus on two areas: developing new materials and processes to capture carbon, as well as improving the technology already in place, according to a DOE press release.

In developing new carbon capture tech, the DOE is working with substances that can absorb a large amount of carbon from the atmosphere and lock it away. Other projects are building membranes and filters that trap carbon passing through them.


In funding projects focused on technology already developed and in use, the DOE aims to improve the U.S. carbon capture system on a large scale. Successful technologies will be tested on scale models to find defects and flaws, and hopefully find ways to fix or mitigate them.