South Texas residents say LNG project’s carbon capture promises ring hollow

This story is a collaboration between Floodlight and DeSmog UK.

PORT ISABEL — As the Mexican Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, festivities drew to a detailed, Dina Nuñez referred to as to order a gathering of feminine grassroots activists in a modest dwelling within the coronary heart of Port Isabel. Top of her agenda: how one can cease a Houston-based oil and gasoline firm from constructing a $10 billion venture to export liquefied pure gasoline on a close-by stretch of coast.

For Nuñez and her associates, the struggle towards the venture — often called Rio Grande LNG — is about defending their neighborhood from air air pollution; preserving shrimping and tourism; and defending habitats for pelicans, endangered ocelots and aplomado falcons on the venture website on unspoiled wetlands between Port Isabel and the bigger metropolis of Brownsville.

The declare by developer NextDecade to be constructing the “greenest LNG project in the world” has thrust the ladies to the forefront of a world wrestle. At a time when scientists warn there will be no new fossil gasoline developments if the world goes to keep away from the worst impacts of the local weather disaster, oil and gasoline executives are turning to a know-how often called carbon capture and storage, or CCS, to persuade traders, politicians and the general public their growth plans are climate-safe.

“This is a poor community, yes. We’re not saying we don’t need jobs,” Nuñez mentioned, shortly earlier than the assembly of volunteers with the Neighbors for the Wellness of the Coastal Community group, recognized in Spanish as Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera. “But we don’t need work that affects the environment and, ultimately, the health of the community.”

In a major instance of the ups and downs of the American liquefied pure gasoline {industry}, plans to construct Rio Grande LNG faltered in 2020 as demand for vitality cratered in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, and concern over its local weather influence grew. But the venture has been resurrected due to a European scramble for LNG triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a brand new twist on the unique design — using CCS to painting the ability as a supply of “clean” vitality.

These claims hinge on a proposal by NextDecade to make use of CCS to capture greater than 5 million tons a 12 months of the carbon dioxide produced in the course of the means of supercooling the gasoline for loading on to specialised tankers for export. The firm says will probably be one of many largest CCS methods in North America — and the primary LNG terminal to cut back its carbon dioxide emissions by greater than 90%.

“NextDecade is a clean energy company accelerating the path to a net-zero future,” NextDecade chief govt Matthew Schatzman mentioned throughout a convention name to current the CCS plan to monetary analysts in March 2021. “Efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions are at the very foundation of our company.”

Opponents level on the market’s an enormous catch, nonetheless. Only 6% to 7% of the general emissions related to such initiatives are generated in the course of the means of cooling the gasoline, in keeping with a 2019 study by the Department of Energy. That implies that the proposed CCS plant may solely ever mitigate a small fraction of Rio Grande LNG’s whole local weather influence.

And that influence may very well be appreciable. The Sierra Club estimates that constructing Rio Grande LNG may generate as much as 163 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions a 12 months — similar to 44 coal crops, or greater than 35 million vehicles. That analysis components within the potential emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, a strong local weather pollutant, related to the manufacturing, transport and end-use of the pure gasoline. NextDecade didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.

“Carbon capture is like trying to put a Band-Aid on a bullet hole,” mentioned Bekah Hinojosa, a Brownsville artist, neighborhood organizer and Gulf Coast marketing campaign consultant for the Sierra Club. “The project itself is highly destructive in so many different ways, and would still release a tremendous amount of toxic air pollution into our impoverished brown and Indigenous community.”

Technical and financial hurdles imply that there are solely 30 commercial CCS projects in operation worldwide — lots of that are used to extract extra oil by reinjecting carbon dioxide into wells. The industry-backed Global CCS Institute estimates the capability of those current installations is 43 million tons of carbon dioxide a 12 months — about 0.1% of worldwide emissions.

Nevertheless, as requires oil and gasoline firms to cut back their local weather impacts have intensified, curiosity in CCS has grown. In September, the whole capability of business CCS projects in the planning phases grew 44% over the earlier 12 months, to 244 million tons yearly of carbon dioxide, in keeping with the Global CCS Institute.

At least 15 deliberate or current LNG export or upstream gasoline initiatives globally have introduced plans so as to add CCS, in keeping with a tally by nonprofit local weather news service DeSmog. These embody 5 in Louisiana and Texas deliberate by firms together with NextDecade, G2 Net-Zero LNG, Venture Global, Sempra Energy and French big TotalEnergies.

Revived venture

First proposed in 2015, Rio Grande LNG stirred opposition from residents involved concerning the sorts of fossil gasoline mega-projects seen on different components of the Gulf Coast arriving on their doorstep. Building the terminal would bulldoze a Central Park-sized space of land sacred to the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas to erect big storage tanks and flaring towers, and power native fishers to deal with LNG tanker ships three soccer fields lengthy.

The plan suffered a public blow when French utility Engie pulled out of talks with NextDecade to purchase LNG for 20 years for $7 billion in November 2020. Media experiences on the time mentioned the French authorities, a part-owner of Engie, was involved about methane emissions from the manufacturing of the fracked gasoline for the ability within the Permian Basin.

The subsequent March, NextDecade announced it will add CCS to the deliberate venture. The firm has additionally unveiled plans to acquire “responsibly sourced” gasoline and to work with Project Canary, an environmental information firm, to measure the greenhouse gasoline depth of its LNG exports.

But the venture could not have been revived had been it not for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which injected new life into the LNG {industry} as Europe rushed to secure alternatives to Russian pipeline gasoline. In May, NextDecade announced it had signed a 15-year settlement with Engie, with the primary LNG transport as early as 2026. Engie didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark.

Preliminary tree-felling work on the website has since began, although the corporate has but to make an important closing funding choice on the venture. It can be unclear exactly the place NextDecade plans to retailer any carbon dioxide captured by its deliberate CCS plant. The firm mentioned in an August presentation to traders that geologic storage websites had been being assessed, however opponents of the plan query whether or not the native space is appropriate.

“They haven’t even done a basic geological study of the land and the area to see if it would even support a carbon-capture facility,” mentioned Christopher Basaldú, a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, who volunteers with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. “I can tell you that it doesn’t; it’s all sand and clay.”

Carbon credit

The Biden administration gave CCS a lift in August by increasing a tax credit score for storing carbon — often called 45Q — within the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act. Given the large price of carbon-capture initiatives, the {industry} is engaged on an extra supply of finance: getting different large polluters to assist pay for them.

In June 2021, oil firms fashioned a coalition referred to as the CCS+ Initiative, which goals to determine a carbon accounting framework to allow the {industry} to promote carbon credits to aviation, metal, cement or different carbon-heavy firms searching for to offset a few of their very own emissions. Founding members included TotalEnergies and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a unit of American driller Occidental Petroleum.

The CCS+ Initiative says it goals to assist the large, world buildout of carbon-capture initiatives envisaged in lots of fashions for reaching the targets of the 2015 Paris local weather settlement.

But NextDecade, which has joined the CCS+ Initiative by way of its subsidiary NEXT Carbon Solutions, says it hopes to promote carbon credit to assist finance its deliberate CCS plant at Rio Grande LNG. That prospect has been dismissed by specialists, who say carbon credit must be used to finance absolute reductions in emissions — not add a inexperienced veneer to new fossil gasoline manufacturing.

“CCS was always greenwash for oil and gas production. Carbon credits for CCS for oil and gas production is greenwash on top of the greenwash,” mentioned Polly Hemming, a carbon market specialist on the Australia Institute suppose tank.

The CCS+ Initiative declined to remark.

“The companies have a lot of power”

Nuñez’s Vecinos, a shrimper’s affiliation, the town of Port Isabel, the Sierra Club and different teams wrote a joint letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December 2021 to lift a sequence of questions over the CCS plan.

Tom Gosselin, an affiliate lawyer with the Sierra Club, mentioned the organizations had been involved that NextDecade could search to chop prices by operating any CCS system solely intermittently — or reneging on its pledge to put in the tools altogether. “We think it’s essentially greenwashing because the developer hasn’t actually committed to using CCS but seems to want the benefits of claiming that it will use CCS,” Gosselin instructed DeSmog.

Rio Grande LNG mentioned in a response printed on the regulatory fee web site that the claims within the letter had been “baseless,” had been “near-conspiratorial,” and demonstrated a critical lack of awareness of CCS know-how, world vitality markets and industrial agreements. “Singling out the LNG export project that is proposing the most aggressive means of capturing CO2 emissions of any project in the US does not make sense in light of the demonstrated increasing global demand for natural gas,” the response mentioned.

As the Vecinos assembly in Port Isabel drew to a detailed, candles nonetheless burned on an ofrenda bearing items for the spirits of the useless: cigarettes, pan de muerto and a can of Coca-Cola. The girls served spicy rooster salad and tostadas whereas taking good care of their youngsters.

“I really believe, unfortunately, that there is a possibility that LNG will come here, because there’s a lot of money in the game. And the companies have a lot of power,” Nuñez mentioned. “Unfortunately, people see opportunities for new jobs, but they don’t see the other side of the story.”

Gaige Davila contributed reporting.