4. Novel niches—that is, various concepts (including biological) for converting CO₂ to useful products, among other ideas.

For the most part, the sessions were roundtable discussions, with individuals contributing ideas throughout the session.

The workshop is part of a project conducted by the NRC for DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (DOE/FE). DOE/FE will consider the workshop report as it develops a solicitation to be issued in spring 2003. The solicitation will call for research proposals on enabling science and technology research on novel approaches for the management of carbon from energy systems.

Once proposals are received in response to the solicitation, this committee will hold a meeting to review the proposals and will evaluate them on their scientific, technical, engineering, and environmental merits, among others. It will then write a letter report to DOE/FE on its evaluation of the proposals. After DOE/FE has received the letter report and issued its funding decisions, the committee will hold a meeting to identify lessons learned from the process used to elicit this first round of “novel exploratory research” proposals, and it will review DOE/FE’s carbon management program (Carbon Sequestration Program) to consider priorities, balance, and project management. The committee will then write a short final report commenting on the program as a whole and on ways for DOE/FE to capitalize on the lessons learned.

Chapters 2 through 6 of this report summarize the most promising new ideas on carbon management identified by each of the four subgroups at the workshop. In the respective chapters, the ideas are described, their significance is explained, and research opportunities are listed. Each chapter includes a statement of the scientific and engineering challenges related to its topic. Chapter 6 includes crosscutting issues not specific to one of the four subgroups. The chapters themselves do not include detailed analysis regarding feasibility, energy and mass balance, and so forth, as the workshop’s time and scope did not permit this; it is assumed such analyses will be carried out in the research proposals that DOE funds.