-
The Carbon-Free Technology Initiative aims to achieve net-zero emissions in the U.S. electricity sector by promoting policies to ensure the commercial availability of affordable, carbon-free, 24/7 power technologies by the early 2030s. Learn More.
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time, and it is essential that we take aggressive action to tackle climate change while also delivering the reliable and affordable energy that powers the American economy.
Existing technologies can get us much of the way to a 100-percent clean energy future. Completing the work will require new, carbon-free, 24/7 technologies that are affordable for customers.
Ultimately, technology will drive the timeline to a 100-percent clean energy future, and federal policies are a necessary catalyst to accelerate the pace of innovation and to ensure these technologies are demonstrated and commercialized in the time that electric companies need them.
We can meet the challenge of addressing climate change and develop the carbon-free technologies that will help the world meet this challenge.
Our organizations have joined together to form and advance the Carbon-Free Technology Initiative.
Many of the CFTI’s policy recommendations across all technology areas address research and development, demonstration, deployment, and issues that have an impact on the cost or performance of a technology, such as siting and permitting. Our policy recommendations address the need for appropriations, authorizations, and tax and finance policies to advance these technologies.
- Increase the DOE R&D and ARPA-E budgets by two to four times current levels for carbon-free technologies over the next five years.
- Establish a dedicated program to guide and support the demonstration of the portfolio of dispatchable carbon-free technologies needed by the electric industry to achieve deep carbon reductions.
- Establish technology-neutral incentives for the deployment of innovative zero-carbon technologies.
- Provide funding to support integrated demonstrations on a wide range of hydrogen production and use cases (e.g., Hydrogen Hubs).
- Amend existing federal incentives for commercial-scale carbon capture, particularly the Section 45Q tax credit for carbon sequestration, to drive faster project development.
The CFTI focuses on policy recommendations to advance key technology areas. We also support the creation of the domestic supply chain needed to deploy advanced clean energy technologies.
Zero carbon fuels are portable, storable, affordable, energy-dense fuels derived from hydrogen, ammonia, or synthetic hydrofluorocarbons made with carbon extracted from the air. They can help power the portions of the economy not served by electrification, including heavy-duty shipping and concrete.
Advanced energy storage is storage that can hold energy for days, weeks, and months, allowing energy generated from zero-carbon sources like solar and wind to be stored across seasons. Demand efficiency refers to a range of new hardware and software solutions that increase grid efficiency to align customer demand with the availability of a variable energy supply from sources like renewables. As more renewable electricity is supplied to the grid, long-duration storage and advanced demand efficiency are important to taking full advantage of the benefits of wind and solar.
Carbon capture technologies enable power plants and other industrial sources to capture carbon dioxide emissions, transport them, and either utilize them with emissions reductions impact or store them underground permanently. While carbon capture technologies have been demonstrated at a commercial scale, deployment of carbon capture in the power sector has been slow. Federal policy can bring down the cost of capture and enable the deployment of commercial-scale power sector projects.
Nuclear energy produces carbon-free generation at scale. Advanced nuclear is a new kind of reactor that has the potential to offer additional safety features, decreased waste production, more efficient use of fuel resources, and reduced material inputs.
Increased funding is critical for advanced nuclear fission and fusion, which have the potential to achieve deep carbon reductions not only in the electric power sector, but also the transportation, building, and industrial sectors.
While the U.S. electric power industry has deployed gigawatts of wind and solar energy over the past decade, transformational innovations to increase efficiency and dispatchability and to reduce the costs of onshore wind and solar are still possible. Offshore wind is at a much earlier stage of commercial maturation, and innovation to improve the efficiency, cost, and performance of offshore technologies is needed.
By accessing deeper, hotter resources, super hot rock (SHR) geothermal could produce 10 times the energy per well compared to conventional geothermal. The potential of SHR geothermal is vast, scalable, and builds on existing industries for drilling and power production. SHR geothermal is in the early stages of research, development, and demonstration, but, given the small ecosystem for this technology, the learning curve could be rapid.
September 25, 2021
July 28, 2023
May 2023
Utility Dive, June 4, 2021
Electric Perspectives, March/April 2021
UtilityDive, January 26, 2021
September 15, 2020