WRI has been working with the School of Energy Resources at the University of Wyoming to turn massively abundant subbituminous Powder River Basin (PRB) coal into asphalt binder material for paving and roofing applications. PRB coal has about 1/3 the CO2 footprint to take from the ground and transport to a refinery for conversion into asphalt compared to a conventional crude oil. PRB is upgraded using renewable carbon solvents to produce a black viscoelastic binder. This process produces little gas or other byproducts and incorporates biogenic carbon through a chemical reaction. Using renewable solvents from bio-oils allows nature to sequester CO2 form the atmosphere, and once this is reacted with coal this CO2 is turned into a long-term material for infrastructure. Calculations for the hybrid coal/bio-based asphalt show that 1 ton of the product can store about 1.43 tons of CO2—due to its biogenic carbon content. If all the roads in North America could be paved with this product it would store about 7 million cars CO2e/year.