Professors David Cole and Ann Cook of the School of Earth Sciences will receive $1.2 million in funding as part of a cooperative agreement awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM)under the Tri-State CO2 Storage Hub Project (DE-FE0032441). This $69 million project brings together research team members from the Southern State Energy Board (lead), Tenaska, Projeo, West Virginia University, and the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. 

The project intends to characterize four stacked geologic reservoir and caprock carbon storage systems in the West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania region to better understand suitability for CO2 storage and caprock competence. The eventual aim is to establish the Tri-State Carbon Capture and Storage Hub as infrastructure in support of the decarbonization of the industrial facilities in the region. Currently, the region has no viable CO2 storage solutions despite a clear customer base (131 industrial facilities within 50 miles of the proposed project site that report nearly 47 million Mt of CO2 emissions per year). The project will characterize the target formations using data from geophysical methods and data obtained from the drilling of three characterization wells. The OSU efforts will contribute to three broad categories: (a) Geologic Core Data Collection & Analysis, (b) Well Logging and (c) Petrophysics. The overarching research goal is to connect wherever possible observations from field scale measurements (e.g., well logging and seismic data) with those determined at the bench-scale (e.g., physical and chemical measurements, 2- and 3-D imaging).

The OSU team will also contribute to the execution of a Community Benefits Plan that includes broad engagement and collaboration between Ohio and West Virginia state agencies. The Community Benefits Plan calls for establishing and maintaining a Community Advisory Board, hosting pre-drilling community engagement events, building and supporting competencies regarding subsurface modeling to support UIC Class VI permitting, establishing and growing relationships with regional Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and supporting exposure to carbon capture and storage and energy transition career opportunities.