IUCRC Planning Grant University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Center for Earth Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Utilization (CEGRU)

The Industry-University Cooperative Research Center for Earth Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Utilization (CEGRU) proposes an integrated collaboration between two sites, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Oklahoma State University, to conduct science and engineering research to reduce greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere through prevention, mitigation, utilization, and storage. The CEGRU core is composed of faculty and students from two universities working with diverse interested entities including private sector companies, government agencies, and national research labs.

Community organizations and stakeholders will also be engaged with a purpose to minimize the effect of methane and other greenhouse gases on climate change and its consequent impacts. The Center will seek to accomplish this goal by performing transdisciplinary basic research to advance greenhouse gas subsurface reservoir resource assessment and security via improved understanding, the development of novel methods of energy and greenhouse gas storage in geologic media, and carbon dioxide storage in manufactured materials.

Recognizing that the energy transition from petroleum to other sources requires tradeoffs that could potentially have different negative impacts, this Center will pursue integrative research to evaluate and track greenhouse impacts to air quality, water, climate, and society. Broader impacts of the Center include community engagement which is integral to all activities.

This approach effectively identifies key stakeholders for success of projects, with efforts that focus on understanding community and stakeholder sentiment working to include their collaboration on problem resolution and the development of and relationship to greenhouse gas management strategies. The Center’s engagement of undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs in research activities will contribute to the development of the workforce of the future which is required to support net-zero greenhouse gas goals by 2050.

Active collaborations with Minority-Serving Institutions will promote equitable training opportunities for a diverse future workforce. Center efforts will result in much needed increased diversity and equitable improvements in the research community as well as engagement with communities in areas that will be impacted communities where technologies will be implemented.

The Center Lead Site at the University of Illinois will lead research to refine greenhouse gas (methane, hydrogen, etc.) storage resource assessment by building on its extensive expertise in carbon storage and oil and gas exploration. The research will leverage the Illinois State Geological Survey’s well-established relationships with local operators, the energy industry, and the US Geological Survey.

Its work will integrate University of Illinois expertise in rock mechanics and earthquake characterization and prediction to provide risk assessment methodologies. It will also employ machine learning methods to its and its partner Site in Oklahoma's extensive library of oil and gas wells to develop risk assessments that can be used for prediction of leakage and induced/triggered seismicity.

The wellbore completion technology research and seismic reflection data processing by its Oklahoma partner Site will be integrated into estimates of the storage volume of various geologic formations, a critical component of greenhouse gas resource/storage/and leak assessment. The Illinois Site of the proposed Center will work with the Oklahoma Site to collect, integrate, and analyze the potential utilization of legacy and marginal wells for greenhouse gas mitigation and to improve understanding of the role of completions in leakage development.

An additional Center focus will be the drone-based detection and measurement of methane gas emissions from existing and orphan oil and gas wells.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.