Carnegie Mellon receives $1.85 million( PITTSBURGH With a $1.85 million gra...)

PITTSBURGH With a $1.85 million grant from the New York-based Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF), Carnegie Mellon Universitys M. Granger Morgan will lead a team of investigators from Carnegie Mellon, the University of Minnesota, the Vermont Law School and the Washington, D.C.-based energy law firm Van Ness Feldman to develop and promote a regulatory structure for the safe and economical capture, transport and deep geological sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the United States.

Morgan and his colleagues note that CO₂ can be removed from coal or natural gas in variety of ways before or after combustion. Once it is removed, it can be deposited deep underground in appropriate geological formations. Most of the technologies for doing this exist today at commercial scale, but have not yet been combined for power plants. The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va., is supporting much of the research that is needed to make such processes commercially viable.

Getting the technology right is important, Morgan said. But if the U.S. is going to put large quantities of CO₂ underground, we need to be sure it is done in a safe and effective way.

Morgan and his colleagues argue that before any definitive regulations can be developed, the U.S. must first get experience with several commercial-scale facilities. For this reason, developing an adaptive, two-stage approach to regulation will be a key part of the new DDCF-supported project.

This grant is further recognition of the great strength that Carnegie Mellon has built up in technically-focused work in energy policy, said Pradeep K. Khosla, dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.

Previous work done by Carnegie Mellons Ed Rubin and his colleagues on modeling carbon capture, by Jay Apt, Lester Lave and Paul Fischbeck on the electricity industry, and by investigators associated with o
'/>"/>