Carbon Transport and Storage

The Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management’s (FECM) Carbon Transport and Storage program is advancing the research, development, and deployment of carbon transport and storage technologies and infrastructure. 

For over 50 years, carbon dioxide (CO₂) has been successfully captured, transported, and injected at fully commercial scale in deep underground geologic formations. In recent decades, large-scale injection of captured CO₂ emissions has occurred explicitly for the purpose of permanent geologic storage, including off the coast of Norway and beneath farmlands in Illinois. To date, a total of more than a quarter of a billion tons of CO₂ has been captured and stored globally, and over a billion tons of CO₂ has been transported through various transport modes.

To meet its net-zero commitments, the United States will likely need to capture and permanently store approximately 400-1,800 million metric tons of CO₂ annually by 2050. To accommodate the expected rapid growth of the carbon capture and storage industry, FECM’s Carbon Transport and Storage program is focused on significantly expanding our CO₂ transport network over the next decade. 

FECM’s project investments are helping to advance networks that connect CO₂ sources, such as industrial facilities and power plants—as well as legacy CO₂ emissions captured directly from the atmosphere—to geologic formations where large quantities of captured CO₂ emissions can be securely and permanently stored deep underground or transported to locations where it can be used as a feedstock to manufacture fuels, chemicals, building materials, and other long-lived products. CO₂ may be transported by any single or a multimodal combination of freight transportation, such as pipelines, rail, trucks, barges, or ships.

FECM works to achieve these goals through engagement with other government agencies, industry, academia, technology developers, nongovernmental organizations, communities, and other stakeholders.