Announcing the Midwest Regional Carbon Initiative (MRCI)
We were also pleased to announce a new partnership led by Battelle and the Illinois Geological Survey titled the Midwest Regional Carbon Initiative (MRCI) as a next step for CCUS development in the Region. MRCI merges MRCSP with MGSC into a larger region which will build off the foundation of the regional partnerships to move the region towards readiness and deployment of commercial CCUS. One project goal is to engage national and international stakeholders, including state geological surveys, universities, industrial partners and advisors, fossil fuel production and utilization companies, and NGOs. Additional, MRCI aims to advance CCUS research by addressing key technical challenges, obtaining and sharing data to support CCUS, facilitating regional infrastructure planning, and performing regional technology transfer. Some project facts are below:
- Project study area includes states from the Midwest to east coast, covering more than 1/3rd of the nation’s CO2 point sources accounting for 945 million metric tons of CO2. The majority of these sources are from power plants.
- The region covers multiple storage provinces and plays including the Michigan Basin, Illinois Basin, Appalachian Basin, Atlantic Coast, and Off-shore. The geology is diverse offering numerous storage systems.
- The region has hosted more than a dozen pilot and/or full-scale CCUS projects which provides a solid foundation for future work
Over the next few months the MRCSP and MRCI websites will transition into the new MRCI website, while maintaining access to the past work of the two Partnerships.
