Director’s Corner

by Brian Anderson, Ph.D.

At NETL, our talented team of scientists and engineers are working hard to advance the technologies needed to usher in a new era of clean, decarbonized energy. This sustainable future is in reach, and it gets closer day by day thanks in part to the successes coming out of our Lab. 

We illustrate a selection of these successes in our newly released quarterly report that presents a roundup of some of our work to meet clean energy goals calling for a net-zero carbon emission electricity sector by 2035 and economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050.  

Our second-quarter success stories describe impressive strides across a range of energy technology development, including: 

• A patent for a novel process to transform coal into a game-changing material that can be used to manufacture valuable products while generating jobs in coal communities.  
• An NETL-supported demonstration project showed how more than 2.8 million tonnes of CO₂ was captured and transported from an ethanol plant to the Mt. Simon Sandstone saline reservoir for permanent geologic storage — the largest demonstration of its kind in the United States. 
• A patent for a new fiber optic sensor designed to detect hydrogen leaks at storage facilities that can accelerate the drive to put hydrogen to work as a dependable fuel to advance America’s decarbonization efforts. 

These are only a few examples of our team’s recent successes and contributions as we continue our mission to drive innovation and deliver solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. I invite you to read more about these and other efforts in this report. (PDF version available here.)