The California Energy Commission (CEC) has issued a Request for Information (RFI), looking for input from relevant stakeholders on potential partnerships and tech capabilities for developing carbon management hubs in California.
The CEC hopes to gather opinions from different market players, including direct air capture and carbon capture, utilization, and storage companies; research institutions; clean energy providers; community engagement organizations; and organizations experienced in federal government collaboration, as well as any other potential partner.
Through this RFI, the CEC aims to collect information on different approaches, collaborations, and technologies that would enable the creation of carbon management hubs in California.
These hubs would serve to demonstrate DAC technologies along with a comprehensive carbon management ecosystem that would advance California’s efforts towards its ambitious carbon reduction goals.
As clarified in the CEC announcement, this RFI is not related to the Carbon Removal Innovation Support Program (CRISP) grant funding opportunity and will not influence funding decisions.
The RFI comes off the heels of two recently announced U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funding opportunities that allocate $1.8 billion for the design, building, and running of mid- and large-scale commercial DAC plants and infrastructure scaling platforms, as well as another $1.3 billion to catalyze investments in transformative CCUS technologies.
While the CEC request for information aligns with the goals behind the DOE funding opportunities, it will not be applying for financial backing through these two programs.
Relevant: CRC Approves California’s First Carbon Capture And Storage Project
Instead, the RFI will gather essential data and knowledge that will support the potential facilitation of partnerships for a California-based carbon management hub. This effort, in turn, is expected to attract federal investments to the state.
In the bigger picture, this initiative comes in response to the guidelines laid out by the California Climate Crisis Act that call for carbon neutrality by 2045, and it supports the 2022 Scoping Plan put together by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which highlights the need for carbon dioxide removal to address residual CO2 emissions.
The RFI will be accepting responses until Wednesday, Jan 29, 2025.
Read more: DOE Invests $14M To Advance Carbon Conversion Technologies
