## DOE intends to award $4M for projects to optimize safe, secure, and verifiable carbon storage ##### 29 December 2020 The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) announced its intention to make$4 million in federal funding available for cost-shared research and development of tools and methods to optimize safe, secure, and verifiable carbon dioxide storage. (DE-FOA-0002401)

DOE’s Carbon Storage Program focuses on developing, testing, and verifying technologies and techniques that address challenges related to long-term, commercial-scale storage of CO2in the deep subsurface. Key initiatives within the Advanced Storage R&D area include improvements to monitor the seal integrity of caprocks and to predict seismicity magnitudes and potential hazards before and during the injection of CO2.

The intent of the FOA is to solicit and competitively select cost-shared applications that show the most promise for developing novel tools and methods to improve:

• The ability to cost-effectively detect and characterize faults during the site characterization phase of potential storage sites, especially the detection and characterization of faults located in the crystalline basement rocks beneath the sedimentary rock layers that could be targeted for CO2 storage.

The detection and characterization of faults and their stress state can improve existing risk assessments associated with CO2 injection in the deep subsurface. Many areas with potential carbon storage opportunities have limited information (existence, location, size, orientation, stress state, and properties of faults) on the underlying, crystalline basement rock. New technologies can lead to improved successful measurement of parameters and improved resolution of fault characteristics and fluid flow paths from points of fluid injection to identified faults.

• The ability to assess accurately the maximum likelihood magnitude seismic event that large-scale CO2 injection at a particular site could create, particularly for faults located in the crystalline basement rocks beneath the sedimentary rock layers that could be targeted for CO2 storage.

• The identification, location, and quantification of CO2/native fluid migration through the main caprock layer(s) overlying an injection reservoir.

Robust monitoring at a carbon storage site is necessary to detect, locate, and quantify the migration of CO2 and/or native storage formation fluids (e.g., brines) in the subsurface within and/or above the storage complex seal. More robust techniques are sought for this detection, seeking specifically detection inside the first main seal or in the first permeable layer above the first main seal layer.