Capturing Carbon in Nebraska was a three-part webinar series hosted by the Great Plains Institute and Battelle Memorial Institute, which focused on carbon capture, utilization, and storage opportunities in Nebraska. Battelle led project activities, which included geologic characterization of commercial storage sites in Nebraska and Kansas, project risk assessment of an integrated CCUS project in the Midcontinent, regulatory and permitting issues, commercialization and planning of commercial CCUS projects, and public outreach. The series was a product of the Integrated Midcontinent Stacked Carbon Storage Hub research project funded by the US Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory’s Carbon Storage Assurance and Feasibility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) Initiative. The CarbonSAFE Initiative aims to develop “geologic storage sites for the storage of 50+ million metric tons (MMT) of carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial sources.”
The Great Plains Institute’s primary role on the research project was leading the outreach team, including work with other project partners to engage government, industry, trade associations, and other external stakeholders, as well as conducting supplemental research and mapping of geologic resources and storage opportunities. This project complemented other GPI work through the Carbon Capture Coalition, Regional Deployment Initiative, and State Carbon Capture Work Group.
(Need a primer on carbon capture? Check out our Carbon Capture 101 post.)
This webinar series explored the potential opportunity in Nebraska for carbon capture, including feasibility and economics for sources such as ethanol and power plants, resources for enhanced oil recovery and other geologic storage, pipeline infrastructure needed to build a regional capture and storage hub with Nebraska and neighboring states, and policy that partnership to accelerate progress. The Battelle team showed that the geologic storage sites identified by the team in southwestern Nebraska and western Kansas have the potential to store CO2 under a variety of economic and market conditions through a hybrid of vertically-stacked oil and gas fields and saline formations.
The first webinar in the series covered the history and development of carbon capture technologies; the 45Q tax credit for projects that geologically store or beneficially use carbon captured from industrial facilities, power plants, and ambient air; the infrastructure already in place in Nebraska for transportation of CO2; and a brief overview of the geology of the region where carbon could be stored. A recording of the webinar is available to view below.
The second webinar explored the economics and specific case studies of carbon capture, looking at opportunities at Nebraska Public Power District and CVR Energy, as well as what carbon capture looks like for ethanol facilities and the infrastructure necessary for capturing carbon.
The final webinar focused on the geological formations unique to Nebraska and how they offer prospects for carbon capture and CO2-EOR.
The webinar series was co-hosted by the Nebraska Conservation and Survey Division, Nebraska Ethanol Board, Nebraska Public Power District, Regional Deployment Initiative, and Renewable Fuels Nebraska.
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