Descriptions of the four selected projects follow:

1. Regional Initiative to Accelerate CCUS Deployment in the Midwest and Northeastern USA – Battelle Memorial Institute (Columbus, OH) will combine two RCSPs—the Midwest RCSP led by Battelle and the Midwest Geologic Sequestration Consortium led by the Illinois State Geological Survey—to form a new regional initiative comprising midwestern and northeastern states. The initiative will align the investigation of key technical challenges and the regional infrastructure evaluation with three sedimentary basins and the Arches province.

2. Carbon Utilization and Storage Partnership of the Western United States – New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (Socorro, NM) will form a new Carbon Utilization and Storage Partnership (CUSP), whose primary objective is to catalog, analyze, and rank carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) options for the western United States. CUSP will focus on the assembly of existing CCUS data into a uniform database, augmenting and refining data where gaps are identified and feeding the data into various analytical and optimization models to create a series of readiness indices for the western region of the United States.

3. Southeast Regional Carbon Utilization & Storage Partnership (SECARB-USA) – Southern States Energy Board (Peachtree Corner, GA) will form  SECARB-USA, encompassing parts of southern states with diverse storage opportunities in oil, saline, and unconventional reservoir settings. The project will identify at least 50 potential regional sites that will be used to address the key technical challenges and support the regional infrastructure evaluation.

4. Plains Carbon Dioxide Reduction (PCOR) Partnership Initiative to Accelerate CCUS Deployment – University of North Dakota (Grand Forks, ND) will form the PCOR Partnership to foster the development of CCUS in northwestern states and Canadian provinces. Areas included in this region are dominated by fossil energy production and coincide with abundant opportunities for geologic storage in sedimentary basins. The partnership will identify and address onshore regional transport challenges facing commercial deployment of CCUS in an expanded region, compared to past initiatives.