USU’s Bingham Research Center in Vernal has been awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a $480,000 dollar project. A press release from Utah State Today shares that USU researchers will work to assess the air quality impacts of a carbon capture and storage project (Uinta Basin CarbonSAFE) that is being explored for the Bonanza Power Plant, located in Vernal. “We are looking to see how feasible it is to commercially store CO2 emissions that would otherwise enter the atmosphere,” shares Seth Lyman, director of the Bingham Research Center. “The basic idea of CCS is to capture carbon emissions before they enter the air and, instead, store them in the ground.” Lyman serves on the local advisory board for the project and further explains that the purpose of the project is to provide information to the local community and receive community input about potential carbon sequestration projects, including “investigation of possible impacts, preparation and distribution of materials and information, and conducting listening sessions.”
