Texas: A hub for carbon capture growth By EPN Staff Billions in promised funding and timely regulatory moves have positioned Texas to develop one of the largest carbon capture and storage networks in the world. There are at least 39 projects proposed in the state, most of them from oil and gas companies looking to pump CO2 deep into the ground, often at older oil fields. Why it matters This is part of a larger plan to stem climate change by reducing the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, in the Earth’s atmosphere. The growing industry is fueled by both private investment and federal incentives, including billions in tax credits passed as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The growth in Texas’ is part of an evolving energy heritage. Traditionally known for oil and gas, Texas last year passed California to become the No. 1 state for utility-scale solar. Texas is also making a major play in nuclear energy, Gov. Greg Abbott announced this fall. Houston has positioned itself as a massive hub for carbon capture, with corporate partners forming an alliance to shepherd the industry. This is at least partly because the Houston area is one of the nation’s largest concentrated sources of industrial CO2 emissions in the United States. Exxon Mobile recently obtained the largest offshore CO2 storage lease in the country – a 271,000 acre plot off the Texas coast. A joint venture from Chevron, Equinor and TotalEnergies, called the Bayou Bend project, could also become one of the largest projects in the country for sequestering emissions from industrial sources, with an underground capacity of one billion metric tons, according to the Greater Houston Partnership, a business booster group. The nation’s only active commercial-scale carbon capture project attached to a coal-fired power plant – and one of only four such facilities worldwide – is in Petra Nova, Texas, E&E News, Politico’s energy news site, reported in December. Room for more One count, published by the Regional Carbon Capture Deployment Initiative, says 683 out of 839 industrial and power facilities in Texas are eligible for 45Q federal tax credits (named after Section 45Q of the tax code) meant to spur carbon sequestration. The state has been making legislative preparations for this industry since 2009, the initiative says, and gave the state’s railroad commission jurisdiction over storage wells in 2022. The state is also moving to get primacy on carbon capture – meaning the state would have oversight authority instead of the Environmental Protection Agency. Nationwide, most of the EPA approved carbon capture projects are owned by oil and gas companies. These projects can do double duty: The CO2 is sequestered underground, but it’s volume can be used to push more oil out of older wells. This is one of the reasons environmentalists sometimes push back against carbon capture: They see it extending fossil fuel usage. Others worry that the infusion increases the likelihood of blowouts or earthquakes, and the thousands of miles of pipelines already used to pump CO2 to its final destination in the United States came under extra scrutiny after one ruptured in rural Mississippi in 2022, forcing an evacuation. The next generation Texas is also at the forefront of Direct Air Capture – pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere so it can be pumped underground, as opposed to more traditional efforts to scrub emissions directly from power plants and other emitters. In 2023, the Biden Administration announced $1.2 billion for the first commercial-scale direct air capture facilities – one in Louisiana and one in Kleberg County, Texas, which is just south of Corpus Christi.
