It’s hard to overstate the value and importance of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Storage Atlas as an enterprise. This fifth edition
is the culmination of a decade of work led by National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) scientists and engineers with their partners
to provide a new scientific and technical foundation to the important work of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)—deep
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through geological carbon storage.
Since large, permeable, porous rock volumes are required for the indefinite safe and secure storage of CO2, there is no CCUS without geological
storage. In this, viable storage targets and their associated rock volumes are like any other natural resource—and as such, must be mapped and
quantified to provide decision makers with sufficient understanding. The Carbon Storage Atlas series began as an attempt to do several things:
• Provide information to many stakeholders about what CCUS is and how it works.
• Provide information to decision makers about the CO2 storage resources in their states and regions.
• Establish methodologies for estimating CO2 storage resources, as well as pathways to improve those assessments.