An ERA is committing $2.85 million to accelerate the adoption of CCUS technology in conjunction with the global project Accelerating CCS Technologies (ACT). This international funding program has $19 million in cash available, and it is open to projects in any participating nations—Germany, India, Norway, the United States, or Canada. The Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) fund of the Albertan government serves as the source of ERA funding.
How to Apply
The application period will end on Monday, September 12, 2022, at 5 a.m. (MT). Applications submitted after the deadline won’t be accepted. All partners require additional information at the national level, and applicants must submit their applications to the ACT Secretariat. To submit a proposal, send a single PDF file to [email protected] ACT4 Call Guidelines’ Annex 2 contains a template that the proposals must follow. Appendices and the Supplemental Information Template must be sent to ERA Applications through email at [email protected].
For further information, click the links below:
The Call’s Context
The ERA is looking for cutting-edge CCUS solutions with significant commercialization potential in Alberta through the $19 million ACT4 Call. With outcomes ranging from new technology, safe storage, and the optimization of current infrastructure to lower operational costs and lowered emissions, successful projects must enable the establishment of CCUS in the energy and industrial sectors. Projects at the technical scale-up, field pilot, commercial demonstration, or commercial implementation stages are eligible for funding.
Project ideas must be submitted by a project consortia made up of at least two qualified applicants from at least two participating countries or regions under the ACT4 Call. If the partners’ organizations receive funding from sources other than the ACT, consortiums with partners from other nations are welcome. This cooperation requirement shows how nations can work together internationally and gives them an opportunity to make use of new information, skills, and resources.
Center Areas
Among the projects of interest are, but are not restricted to:
- Carbon capture is the technique of creating a pure CO2 stream from processes or combustion at the source of emissions.
- Networks for carbon capture and transportation are integrated strategies that link several individual capture sites to a common network by combining various capture locations and transportation infrastructure.
- Implementing a method that directly incorporates carbon into a product at the source of emissions, such as the production of CO2-based products, is known as direct carbon conversion (e.g., fuels, chemicals, building materials).
- Transported to a geological storage location and injected far down, collected CO2 is permanently deposited there.
- Utilization to Storage via Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)/Enhanced Gas Recovery (EGR): The CO2 is delivered to an oil field where it is used to increase oil output before being stored in a reservoir that has run out of oil.
- Clean hydrogen production combines CCUS with low-carbon hydrogen production from fossil fuels.
- Carbon dioxide removal (CDR): Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS)/Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS): using biomass as a source of energy while also capturing and permanently storing the CO2 produced during the conversion of biomass to energy.
- Direct Air Capture (DAC): the creation of an uninterrupted stream of CO2 from the outside air.
- In-situ carbon mineralization is the process by which fluid CO2 is compressed, held, and then mineralized to create calcium or magnesium carbonates that are insoluble in water.
Process of Approval
Every submission will go through a thorough, one-stage evaluation process:
- Full Proposal Review: National/regional financing organizations will assess the submitted full proposals to ascertain their viability, evaluate them in accordance with local and primary standards, and rank them by a group of subject-matter specialists. For the consideration of these complete proposals, ERA will follow its usual review procedure, performing an impartial, demanding, transparent review under the supervision of a Fairness Monitor. Based on the ranking and approval of the individual funding organizations in the ACT consortium, the relevant funding authorities will make the final financing decision. Final funding determinations will be made in accordance with ERA’s usual approval procedure.
- Project Execution: Succeeding candidates must sign contracts with their respective national or regional financing agencies (e.g., Alberta companies with ERA, Norwegian companies with RCN, etc.). A documented agreement describing the internal structure and management of the consortium, intellectual property agreements, and the resolution of internal disputes must be provided for each accepted project by the complete consortium of applicant partners.
In addition to the standards of the national/regional financing organizations, projects will be judged according to three main criteria:
- Excellence: addressing the overall fit within the call’s parameters, the legitimacy of the technology, the scientific merit, the ambition and innovation potential, the opportunity for cross-border collaboration within the CCUS community, and the relevance and clarity of the overall aims.
- Influence: highlighting the significance of the project’s findings, the anticipated contribution to the development of CCUS, the impact on environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), and the project’s applicability to industry.
- Coherent and efficient project planning, a budget allocation that is suitable, risk management protocols, and team readiness are all examples of quality and efficiency.
Concerning the Partnership
A partnership between ERA and the global initiative to fund top-tier innovation that might produce secure and affordable CCUS solutions was announced in 2020. ACT is a collaboration of 15 research and innovation funding agencies from 16 nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and others. It is supervised by the Research Council of Norway (RCN). The first member of the sub-national level is Alberta through ERA.
The ACT consortium has established itself as a powerful international funding strategy for CCUS-focused research and innovation, a field that has attracted significant interest on a global scale as an important opportunity to reduce emissions for the large industrial sector, which includes power generation, cement production, oil and gas extraction, manufacturing, and more.
The cooperation with innovative groups worldwide represents a huge possibility for future collaboration and knowledge sharing, in addition to leveraging international funding for CCUS programs. At the ACT Knowledge Sharing Workshop, all projects will explain their objectives and strategies. Additionally, each grantee is obliged to create a final outcomes report that will be made available to the public for the good of Alberta as a whole.
ERA contributed more than $2 million to four Alberta-led projects totaling approximately $24 million through the consortium’s prior funding opportunity, the ACT3 Call. These projects were directed by Carbonova Corp., Carbon Management Canada, and two projects from the University of Alberta.
Leave a Reply