Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum Considers Next Steps as Carbon Management Industry Matures

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) announced today that it will be stepping down as Secretariat of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF), an organization dedicated to fostering collaboration to advance carbon capture and storage technologies.

“It has been a tremendous honor and privilege for the Department of Energy to have served CSLF as Secretariat for the past two decades. The organization has been instrumental in facilitating global partnerships and knowledge sharing that helped enable the effective scale-up of carbon capture and storage projects and infrastructure that we are seeing today,” said Brad Crabtree, FECM’s Assistant Secretary at the Department of Energy. “As the carbon management industry continues to mature, the CSLF relationships we have built will play an invaluable role as we collaborate with partners across the globe to help us achieve a clean energy and industrial future.”

FECM has served in the role of Secretariat since CSLF’s creation in 2003, and over the past 20 years, the carbon capture and storage industry has taken off. The early days of the CSLF focused on proving out new technologies, establishing the technical basis for carbon capture and storage projects, and informing supportive policies that would allow for the expansion of the industry. In the process, CSLF generated various documents, including CSLF Technology Roadmaps and Ministerial Communiques, which helped to advance carbon capture and storage technology research and policy understanding around the world.

CSLF members achieved many of the priorities outlined in the CSLF Charter and today, carbon capture and storage investments are poised for scale-up both in the United States and across the globe. For example, there are approximately 37 commercial-scale carbon capture and storage projects in operation globally and over 200 projects in development. And for the first time in its history, the United States has robust federal funding and incentives in place, made available under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, to advance a carbon management portfolio needed to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury.

Further underscoring the Department of Energy’s commitment to helping the United States achieve a net-zero future, FECM has a leading role in allocating the $12 billion in new carbon management funding made available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This funding is advancing the research, development, and demonstration of carbon capture, use, transport, storage, and removal technologies and infrastructure across the country. Since January 2021, FECM has also invested over $985 million into approximately 237 projects to advance a suite of carbon management solutions. Finally, the global Carbon Management Challenge announced by President Biden underscores leadership support at the highest levels of the U.S. government, and the Department’s recently launched Carbon Management Liftoff Report demonstrates that industry is poised to allocate billions of dollars in capital toward the commercial deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies and large integrated carbon management projects.

As CSLF members consider future options for the organization, FECM will continue to engage and collaborate with them through other platforms, such as the Clean Energy Ministerial Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage initiative, on carbon management and climate priorities.

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