GCCSI MENA Region CCUS Forum Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre

Thank you, and good morning. 

 

• I want to thank Jarad [Daniels] and his team at the Global CCS Institute for moderating our discussion today. 

 

• I also want to thank the panel members, His Excellency Suhail Al Mazroui (Su-hail al-maz-U-ri), Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and Vicki Hollub, for their attendance. They have all been leaders on CCUS for many years.

 

• Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week was created to provide a platform for discussion and dialogue on how to accelerate CCUS in various industries and regions. These three panelists have so much important news to share that I will be as brief as possible – so I can sit back down with the rest of you and listen to them.

 

• To state the obvious, advancing economy-wide, at-scale deployment of technologies like carbon capture, carbon dioxide removal, carbon utilization, and transport and storage is a global imperative.

 

• The latest IPCC studies have warned us that – absent deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions – average global temperatures will exceed 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the coming decades, causing harm to ecosystems and vulnerable populations worldwide.

 

• So, meeting our global climate targets will require work in individual countries, as well as regional approaches and international collaboration.

 

• As many of you know, the U.S. successfully enacted major climate policies in the last two years by passing two landmark pieces of legislation – the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, known as BIL, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which is known as the IRA.

 

• Passage of the BIL in November of 2021 has provided $62 billion overall to the Department of Energy over five years for research, development, and deployment of climate-essential technologies and infrastructure.

 

• This funding includes more than $12 billion for projects across the carbon management value chain and another $8 billion for the development of four or more clean hydrogen regional hubs to demonstrate commercial-scale production, transport, and storage.

 

• The legislation institutionalizes the same regional hub development approach we have seen evolve in other parts of the world. There is a $3.5 billion provision to support the development of four regional direct air capture hubs, each of which must be able to capture and store at least one million metric tons of CO2 captured annually from ambient air.

 

• The legislation allows us to build regional CO2 transport and storage infrastructure across the country. This will provide the shared infrastructure needed to achieve economies of scale for multiple facilities and industries—and, again, to allow us to bring carbon management to climate scale.

 

• The loan program we’re developing at DOE will help finance CO2 infrastructure in ways that tie together future carbon capture projects with regional geological storage sites that build on the more than 8,000 kilometers of CO2 pipelines already operating in the U.S.

 

• This program, which we call CIFIA – its full name is Carbon Dioxide Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Authority – is not just about CO2 pipelines. It will also serve as a tool for financing rail, ship, barge, truck and intermodal infrastructure to enable CO2 transport at a regional scale.

 

• So, the Infrastructure Law represents unprecedented federal support for carbon management projects. But on top of that, the Inflation Reduction Act – which Congress passed and the president signed in August – provides several hundred billion dollars in clean energy and industrial tax credits that will revolutionize climate finance. 

 

• In particular, it dramatically expands and improves the 45Q tax credit program to incentivize projects for CCS projects.

 

• These improvements to the 45Q tax credit will increase the price to $85 a metric ton for every metric ton of CO2 captured and permanently stored from industry and electric power generation and up to $180 for every ton of CO2 captured from future direct air capture plants.

 

• These changes will allow many more carbon management projects to move forward in the commercial market without federal funding, including CO2 transport infrastructure projects.

 

• The Department of Energy estimates that, when taken together, the Infrastructure Law and the Investment Reduction Act will reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 2005 levels by 2030, which is a significant step forward.

 

• But in some ways, these announcements are old news. What is new is the implementation of this massive new investment by the Department.

 

• My own Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management has received $2.9 billion in funding for the fiscal year 2022 that just ended. This is an enormous amount of money for our office to manage, and there are too many programs and studies being funded to make a complete list here.

 

• But just in the last several months, we have issued eight Funding Opportunity Announcements Notices and three Notices of Intent, including, just last month, a massive $3.5 billion in funding to develop four direct air capture hubs in different parts of the United States.

 

• So, we’re looking at a historic opportunity to commercialize and deploy CCS and other carbon management solutions in the United States. And for the first time, we have the resources and essential policy pieces in place to help incentivize private sector investment and development.

 

• But it is not enough for the benefits of these domestic investments to stay with the United States. It’s the Biden Administration’s great hope that these investments can help other countries and regions shorten the timeline, and the costs, for deploying CCS and other carbon management these technologies.

 

• It’s worth remembering that the ambitious climate agenda the U.S. is pursuing was inspired in part by the aggressive CO2 transport and storage commitments made in other countries. And what we’re hoping is that the progress we’re making will have a similar effect and create additional virtuous cycles of investments here in the Middle East and elsewhere.

 

• And when it comes to developing an innovative and effective carbon dioxide transport and storage program, we at DOE are very excited to hear about the plans by Saudi Arabia to capture and store 44 million metric tons of carbon a year by 2035. This is a very big deal, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia deserves great credit for taking this step.
• And the same goes for the carbon capture and storage commitments made by heavy industry here in the UAE. This is only the latest significant step forward by the Emirates in terms of its climate leadership, which is becoming even more ambitious as it prepares to host the next Conference of Parties at the end of this year.

 

• So, in closing, thank you again to Global CCS Institute and everyone in the audience who have played such an important role this Sustainability Week.
• We at the Department of Energy continue to stand ready to collaborate and share lessons learned with our global partners. This is an exciting time to be involved in global climate policy and I know everyone here is fully committed in its success.

 

• Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from our other panelists today.