Tampa shipping company awarded $3M grant to reduce carbon

A Tampa shipping company was recently awarded $3 million to develop a solution for transporting liquid carbon dioxide that officials say will help Florida reduce its carbon footprint.

Overseas Shipholding Group received the grant from the United States Department of Energy toward the engineering and design of a new vessel. The company plans to design an articulated tug and barge unit that will take carbon dioxide captured in the Greater Tampa Bay region and across Florida to sequestration sites in Gulf of Mexico, according to a statement from Overseas Shipholding Group. It would also transport carbon dioxide collected at the planned Tampa Regional Intermodal Carbon Hub.

The intermodal carbon hub is being developed at the Port of Tampa Bay through a $400,000 grant the U.S. Department of Energy announced in December to fund the study of a facility to receive, store and process 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year that could be scaled to meet greater volume in the future, the statement says.