29-08-2023

US Department Energy select GE Vernova to lead assessment of potential direct air capture regional hub

GE Vernova’s Advanced Research business in Niskayuna, NY was selected by the U.S. Department Energy to lead a pre-feasibility assessment to establish a direct air capture (DAC) regional hub near Houston, Texas. GE will enter award negotiations with the DOE to finalize the terms and the scope of the study. 

The award negotiations are part of the first round of funding announced from the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law-funded Regional DAC Hubs program. GE Vernova is also a DAC technology provider for two other projects selected for award negotiations, which will be led by the University of Illinois, and executed in Colorado and Florida.

As part of GE Vernova’s proposed study, researchers will explore the feasibility of a novel DAC system design that integrates GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR) and renewable electricity to enable CO2 to be captured from ambient air and stored underground or utilized as a value-added product such as a feedstock for sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). Integrating the heat and power from the 300 MWe BWRX-300 with the DAC system has the potential to achieve the lowest cost of carbon removal. When completed, the project could remove 1 million tons of CO2 from the air per year. That equates to the annual emissions from roughly 200,000 typical cars that get 22 miles per gasoline gallon.

“We are proud to be a part of the Biden Administration’s bold plans to reduce CO2 emissions and bolster a vital new energy industry in carbon capture,” said Matt Guyette, Director, Advanced Research at GE Vernova. “Our pre-feasibility study proposes to draw upon our full suite of energy generation assets and capabilities in ways only GE Vernova can, including carbon-free nuclear and renewable electricity, to create what we believe will be a cost-effective solution for removing millions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.”

The two other projects selected for award negotiations that GE Vernova will be partnering on will be led by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Urbana, Illinois). These projects intend to promote promising technologies that can capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it underground in the Tuscaloosa Group in Florida and in the Denver-Julesburg Basin in Colorado. Both studies aim to develop cooperative relationships between DAC technology providers, green energy providers, CO2 transportation networks, and companies seeking to store CO2 underground.

All stakeholders in the proposed DAC regional hub projects are dedicated to advancing the development of carbon capture while also delivering community benefit. Stakeholders will promote community communication and engagement to establish comprehensive community benefit plans for their project(s).