DOE launches new $8B loan guarantee program, with biomass/hydrocarbon fuels blend option

In Washington, the US Department of Energy Loan Program Office (DOE) has announced the Final Advanced Fossil Energy Projects Solicitation, which is a new $8 billion loan guarantee program under Section 1703 of Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. 

The Solicitation would work also with a biomass/hydrocarbon fuels blend according to DOE.

The program provides long-term financing for advanced fossil energy projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), are innovative technologies utilizing fossil energy, and are located in the United States.  The two principal goals of this program are to encourage commercial use of new or significantly improved energy-related technologies and to achieve substantial environmental benefits.
 
The solicitation contains no minimum GHG standard, however, substantial environmental benefits may be achieved by avoiding, reducing, or sequestering GHG.  The program is intended to apply to a broad range of fossil fuel products, such as, coal, oil, natural gas, shale gas, coal bed methane, methane hydrates, petrochemicals and petrochemical derivatives, and any other hydrocarbon derivatives sourced from fossil fuels.  Further, the program will be available to projects along the value chain, to include extraction, generation, GHG removal, and efficiency improvements and retrofits.  The solicitation will be open to a wide variety of applicants, to include, without limitation, project developers, power plants, mines, refineries, utilities, factories, infrastructure entities, universities, airports, hospitals, and non-profits. 
 
Program applicants will be required to demonstrate that the project technology is either new or significantly improved, specifically excluding technologies that are already used on a commercial scale, subject to the conditions set forth in the definitions of “New or Significantly Improved Technology” and “Commercial Technology” under 10 CFR Part 609.  The solicitation covers four technology areas: advanced resource development, carbon capture, low carbon power systems, and efficiency improvements. 

Examples of new technologies that are intended to be covered by the solicitation include, but are not limited to, coal-bed methane recovery, novel oil and gas drilling, underground coal gasification, carbon capture from traditional coal or natural gas electricity generation, carbon capture from synthesis gases in fuel reforming or gasification processes, carbon capture from effluent streams of industrial processing facilities, permanent geologic storage, enhanced oil recovery, chemical looping processes, coal or natural gas oxycombustion, hydrogen turbines, fuel cells and technology that converts chemical energy into electricity without combustion, combined heat and power technologies, waste heat recovery, microgrids, water efficiency, and high-efficiency distributed fossil power systems.

More on the story here, via Kilpatrick Townsend.