NECTAR: The Negative CO2 Emission Transition Roadmap

C53-22c-271119Meeting climate-stabilizing energy transition goals requires using hybrid-energy CO2 capture systems like Direct Air Capture (DAC) to remove billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere. Deploying this capacity will be difficult because it is complex and energy intensive infrastructure, and there must also be buy- in from communities living in locations best suited for it. The challenge we address is creating a user- friendly automated geospatial decision support software to help site this infrastructure. We will develop the Negative CO2 Emission Transition Roadmap (NECTAR), novel software for siting DAC Infrastructure that uses the IDAES framework. Once developed NECTAR will, for the first time and on the scale and speed demanded by the industry and climate, use IDAES to estimate the cost and performance of DAC powered by various sources of carbon neutral energy, while also providing assistance with community acceptance. We: 1) developed a NECTAR minimum viable product; 2) used process-level and systems-level modeling to determine the geospatial cost of DAC across the country; 3) optimized regional CO2 transportation pipe- line networks; 4) conducted dozens of market research interviews to demonstrate NECTAR and gain feed- back. We disseminated these research activities with multiple peer-reviewed and open-source journal publications and a conference presentation. We will use IDAES to model multiple hybrid energy systems of DAC coupled with multiple options for carbon neutral heat. We will quantify the environmental impact (e.g., carbon footprint) and cost of each DAC hybrid energy system. We will develop a nationwide database of inputs (e.g., cost of primary energy) so that NECTAR can be run across the country. We will develop cloud-based software for NECTAR that integrates front-end and back-end code and algorithms that can be demonstrated. We will establish value- based spatial parameters to help guide community acceptance analyses using robust social science insights and community engagement. We will demonstrate NECTAR by using it for novel hub analyses to determine the most advantageous locations for carbon management hubs in the country. The significance of the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) market cannot be understated because CDR is re- quired to meet climate objectives. Our ten letters of support provided with this proposal represent the breadth of potential users NECTAR across the entire CDR industry. Together, our Phase I market assessment and initial Phase II letters of support indicate massive demand for our NECTAR software, as well as substantial confidence from our letters that the project will be a success.