Houston, TX — A new educational and empowerment tool for Texas communities facing carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure buildout is now available.
The Texas Carbon Capture and Storage Community Resource Hub is the result of a year-long collaboration between Commission Shift and the Rice University Center for Environmental Studies, leveraging resources from the TX CCS Community Advocacy Coalition and Rice’s Center for Research Computing.
Texas pipeline network overlaid by hazardous pipeline incidents.
The resource hub’s ArcGIS maps provide an overview of three key risks posed by carbon capture and storage projects: hazardous pipeline spills and explosions, drinking water contamination, and poorly managed legacy wells which can cause environmental harm. These maps allow users to visualize where legacy wells, drinking water resources, and hazardous pipelines are located, as well as where historic incidents have occurred.
In addition to the risk maps, the tool features stories of CCS projects in the Permian Basin and along the Gulf Coast, outlining the potential hazards associated with the deployment of an extensive carbon capture, transportation, and storage network across Texas. The site includes information on the history of CCS development; proposed reforms for existing CCS regulations; and ways to take action to prevent CCS projects from jeopardizing the future of healthy ecosystems, land fertility, access to safe drinking water, and public health.
CCS is often advertised as an easy fix for our climate crisis: capturing carbon dioxide from emission sources and storing it underground. However, many CCS projects end up adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by failing to capture the proposed amount of CO2 while simultaneously emitting additional CO2 due to energy-intensive processes and leaks. Here in Texas, strong oversight of CCS projects is in jeopardy, as the Railroad Commission — our state oil and gas agency which has a long history of failing to adequately manage its current programs — seeks permitting and oversight authority (or “primacy”) for carbon sequestration wells from the Environmental Protection Agency.
You can view and use the resource here.
Use the tool
