111-5 , enacted February 17, 2009) provided $3.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects and activities at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Authority to spend Recovery Act funds expired on September 30, 2015. Of the $3.4 billion allocated for CCS activities, approximately $1.4 billion went unspent as of the 2015 spending deadline. The largest portion of the unspent funds, $795 million, was intended for DOE's flagship CCS project, FutureGen, which DOE suspended in February 2015. However, several other large CCS demonstration projects were canceled, suspended, or failed to spend all of their Recovery Act funding before the deadline. Congress has long been interested in the future of CCS as a mitigation strategy for lowering global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). Since FY2008, it has appropriated more than $7 billion for CCS activities at DOE. Several bills introduced in the 114 th Congress address CCS directly or indirectly (e.g., S. 601 , S. 1283 , H.R. 3392 , and others). The Obama Administration has promulgated rules on CO 2 emissions from current and future fossil fuel-burning power plants and entered into a global agreement to limit CO 2 emissions. Congress remains divided over those executive branch decisions. DOE, however, has continued to embrace CCS as part of the Administration's strategy to reduce CO 2 emissions from power plants:
Roughly one-third of U.S. carbon emissions come from power plants and other large point sources. CCS and the Clean Power Plan

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) final rule for reducing CO 2 emissions from new fossil fuel power plants, part of the Administration's Clean Power Plan (CPP), found newly constructed power plants incorporating partial CCS to be the Best System of Emission Reduction (BSER). Technical feasibility is just one factor of many that determine whether a CCS demonstration project successfully reaches its goal of producing electricity and capturing CO 2 at commercial scale. In its final rule, EPA states that implementing partial CCS as the BSER is likely to boost future research and development in CCS technologies. Further, the boost would make CCS implementation even more efficacious and cost-effective. These issues, as well as the outcomes from promulgation of EPA's final rule, will likely continue to shape the outlook for CCS commercialization and deployment. Under the 2010 DOE CCS Roadmap , and with the large infusion of funding from the Recovery Act, DOE's goal has been to develop the technologies that will allow for commercial-scale demonstration in both new and retrofitted power plants and industrial facilities by 2020. Recovery Act-Funded Projects

Nine individual projects garnered approximately $2.65 billion of the $3.4 billion—about 78%—made available under the Recovery Act for CCS projects and activities. The projects in each category were awarded more than $100 million. They are listed to illustrate that DOE prioritized large-scale demonstration projects with Recovery Act funding. Some stakeholders argue that DOE CCS programs have been inadequately funded, and that the DOE incentive programs for deploying CCS are not as effective as they should be. One study concluded that even the financial boost from the Recovery Act was insufficient support for development and commercialization of CCS technology:
While the $3.4 billion allocated for CCS in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 was a good start in providing the kind of federal funding assistance needed for CCS technology development, much of those funds were returned to Treasury due to canceled projects. Large-scale CCS projects are complex endeavors, requiring large capital investment and multiyear planning and construction schedules. FutureGen, in particular, faced various impediments that led to its cancellation despite receiving nearly $1 billion of Recovery Act funds. As briefly discussed above (see " Challenges and Delays "), these impediments included delays in receiving the required injection-well permits from the Environmental Protection Agency, court challenges to its plan to sell electricity, and a lawsuit from an environmental advocacy group. DOE acknowledges that many of the Recovery Act-funded projects were technologically difficult and challenging, but it does not consider the relinquishment of unspent funds to signify project failure; rather, DOE takes the relinquishment of funds to mean that the projects simply did not meet the requirement to spend the funds by the deadline. DOE notes that due to its spending on CCS and its partnerships with industry, the costs of capturing CO 2 have dropped significantly and its projects have stored more than 10 million metric tons of CO 2 .
Federal policymakers have long been interested in the potential of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) as a mitigation strategy for lowering global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). Congress has appropriated more than $7 billion since FY2008 to CCS activities at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The Obama Administration has promulgated rules on CO2 emissions from fossil fuel-burning power plants and entered into a global agreement to limit CO2 emissions. Congress remains divided over those executive branch decisions. DOE, however, has continued to embrace CCS as part of the Administration's strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants. Several bills introduced in the 114th Congress address CCS directly or indirectly (e.g., S. 601, S. 1283, H.R. 3392, and others).
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act; P.L. 111-5) provided $3.4 billion for CCS projects and activities at DOE. The large infusion of funding was intended to help develop technologies that would allow for commercial-scale demonstration of CCS in both new and retrofitted power plants and industrial facilities by 2020. Nine individual projects garnered approximately $2.65 billion of the $3.4 billion—about 78%. Each of the nine projects was awarded more than $100 million, and these projects illustrate that DOE prioritized large-scale demonstration projects with Recovery Act funding. The lion's share of funding went to DOE's flagship CCS project FutureGen, which was awarded nearly $1 billion from the Recovery Act.
Authority to spend Recovery Act funds expired on September 30, 2015. Of $3.4 billion allocated for CCS activities, approximately $1.4 billion went unspent as of the spending deadline. The largest portion of the unspent funds, $795 million, was intended for FutureGen, which DOE suspended in February 2015. FutureGen faced various impediments that led to its cancellation, including delays in receiving required injection well permits from the Environmental Protection Agency, court challenges to its plan to sell electricity, and a lawsuit from an environmental advocacy group. Several other large CCS demonstration projects also were canceled, suspended, or failed to spend all of their Recovery Act funding before the 2015 deadline.
Some stakeholders argue that DOE's CCS programs have been inadequately funded, providing less incentive than they should for deploying CCS. One study concluded that even the financial boost from the Recovery Act was insufficient. To be sure, large-scale CCS projects are complex endeavors, requiring substantial capital investment and multiyear planning and construction schedules. However, the conclusion that more federal funding by itself would be sufficient to support development and commercialization of CCS technology may be overly simplistic. DOE acknowledges that many of the Recovery Act-funded projects were technologically difficult and challenging, but it does not consider the relinquishment of unspent funds to signify project failure. DOE notes that due to its spending on CCS and its partnerships with industry, the costs of capturing CO2 have dropped significantly and its projects have stored more than 10 million metric tons of CO2.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) final rule for reducing CO2 emissions from new fossil fuel power plants, part of the Administration's Clean Power Plan, found plants incorporating partial CCS to be the Best System of Emission Reduction (BSER). EPA asserts that CCS is technically feasible. Technical feasibility, however, is just one factor of many that determine whether a project successfully reaches its goal of producing electricity and capturing CO2 at commercial scale. EPA states that implementing partial CCS in the rule is likely to boost future research and development in CCS technologies and to make CCS implementation more efficacious and cost-effective. That may be the case; however, other issues also affect CCS implementation. These issues, as well as the outcomes from promulgation of EPA's final rule, will likely continue to shape the outlook for CCS commercialization and deployment.