South Texas residents say LNG projects make carbon capture promises ring hollow

This story is a collaboration between Spotlight And DeSmog UK.

PORT ISABEL As Mexico’s Da de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, festivities drew to a close, Dina Nuez called to organize a gathering of female grassroots activists in a humble home in the heart of Port Isabel. At the top of her agenda: how to prevent a Houston-based oil and gas company from building a $10 billion project to export liquefied natural gas to a nearby stretch of coast.

For Nuez and her friends, fighting the project known as Rio Grande LNG is about protecting their community from air pollution; shrimp conservation and tourism; and defending habitat for pelicans, endangered ocelots and aplomado falcons at the project site in pristine wetlands between Port Isabel and the larger city of Brownsville.

Developer NextDecade’s claim to build the world’s greenest LNG project has pushed women to the forefront of a global battle. At a time when scientists are warning that there can be no new fossil fuel developments if the world is to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis, oil and gas executives are turning to a technology known as carbon extraction and storageor CCS, to convince investors, politicians and the public that their expansion plans are climate safe.

This is a poor community, yes. We’re not saying we don’t need jobs, Nuez said shortly before the gathering of volunteers with the group Neighbors for the Wellness of the Coastal Community, known in Spanish as Vecinos para el Bienestar de la Comunidad Costera. But we don’t need work that impacts the environment and ultimately the health of the community.

A prime example of the ups and downs of the US liquefied natural gas industry, plans to build Rio Grande LNG faltered in 2020 as energy demand collapsed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about climate impact mounted. But the project has been revived thanks to a European scramble for LNG sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a new spin on the original design through the use of CCS to portray the facility as a source of clean energy.

These claims hinge on a proposal from NextDecade to use CCS to capture more than 5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year produced during the process of supercooling the gas to be loaded onto specialized tankers for export. The company says it will be one of the largest CCS systems in North America and the first LNG terminal to reduce its carbon emissions by more than 90%.

NextDecade is a clean energy company accelerating the path to a net-zero future, NextDecade CEO Matthew Schatzman said on a conference call to present the CCS plan to financial analysts in March 2021. Efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions are the foundation of our business.

However, opponents point out that there is a big catch. According to a 2019 study, only 6% to 7% of total emissions from such projects are generated during the cooling process of the gas study by the Department of Energy. That means the proposed CCS plant could reduce only a small portion of Rio Grande LNG’s overall climate impact.

And that impact can be significant. The Sierra Club estimates that the construction of Rio Grande LNG could generate up to 163 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per year, the equivalent of 44 coal-fired power plants, or more than 35 million cars. That analysis factors in the potential emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, a potent climate pollutant, associated with the production, transportation and end use of natural gas. NextDecade did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Carbon capture is like trying to put a Band-Aid on a bullet hole, said Bekah Hinojosa, a Brownsville artist, community organizer and Gulf Coast campaign representative for the Sierra Club. The project itself is highly destructive in so many ways and would still release a huge amount of toxic air pollution for our impoverished brown and indigenous community.

Due to technical and economic obstacles, there are only 30 commercial CCS projects in use worldwide, many of which are used to extract more oil by reinjecting carbon dioxide into wells. The industry-backed Global CCS Institute estimates the capacity of these existing installations is 43 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, about 0.1% of global emissions.

Nevertheless, interest in CCS has increased as calls for oil and gas companies to reduce their climate impact have increased. In September, the total capacity of commercial CCS projects in the plan stages grew 44% from the previous year, to 244 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the Global CCS Institute.

At least 15 planned or existing LNG export or upstream gas projects worldwide have announced plans to add CCS, according to a count by the nonprofit climate news service DeSmog. These include five in Louisiana and Texas planned by companies including Next decade, G2 Net Zero LNG, Venture Global, Always Energy and French giant TotalEnergies.

Revived project

Rio Grande LNG was first proposed in 2015, sparking backlash from residents concerned about the kind of fossil fuel megaprojects coming their way in other parts of the Gulf Coast. Construction of the terminal would bulldoze a Central Park-sized piece of land sacred to the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas to erect giant storage tanks and flare towers and force local fishermen to compete with LNG carriers three football fields long.

The plan received a public blow when French utility company Engie pulled out of talks with NextDecade to purchase 20-year LNG for $7 billion in November 2020. Media reports said the French government, co-owner of Engie, was concerned about methane emissions from producing the fracked gas for the facility in the Permian Basin.

The following March, NextDecade announced it would add CCS to the planned project. The company also unveiled plans to source responsibly sourced gas and partner with Project Canary, an environmental data company, to measure the greenhouse gas intensity of its LNG exports.

But the project might not have been revived were it not for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which breathed new life into the LNG industry as Europe scrambled to safe alternatives to Russian pipeline gas. In May, NextDecade announced it had signed a 15-year deal with Engie, with the first LNG shipment as early as 2026. Engie did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Preliminary logging work at the site has now commenced, although the company has yet to make a crucial final investment decision on the project. It is also unclear exactly where NextDecade plans to store the carbon dioxide captured by the planned CCS plant. The company said in a August presentation investors that geological storage sites are being assessed, but opponents of the plan question whether the environment is suitable.

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

Carbon credits

The Biden administration boosted CCS in August by extending a tax credit for storing carbon known as 45Q in the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act. Given the enormous costs of carbon capture projects, the industry is working on an additional source of funding: making other major polluters pay for it.

In June 2021, oil companies formed a coalition called the CCS+ Initiativewhich aims to create a carbon accounting framework to enable industry to sell carbon credits to aviation, steel, cement or other carbon-rich companies that want to offset part of their own emissions. Founding members included TotalEnergies and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a division of US drilling company Occidental Petroleum.

The CCS+ initiative says it aims to support the massive, global rollout of carbon capture projects envisioned in many models to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

But NextDecade, which has joined the CCS+ Initiative through its subsidiary NEXT Carbon Solutions, says it hopes to sell carbon credits to help fund its planned Rio Grande LNG CCS plant. That prospect has been dismissed by experts, who say carbon credits should be used to fund absolute emissions reductions and not add a green layer to new fossil fuel production.

CCS has always been a greenwash for oil and gas production. CCS carbon credits for oil and gas production are greenwash on top of greenwash, said Polly Hemming, a carbon market specialist at the Australia Institute think tank.

The CCS+ initiative declined to comment.

The companies have a lot of power

Nuezs Vecinos, a shrimp fishermen’s association, the City of Port Isabel, the Sierra Club and other groups wrote a joint letter to the Federal Energy regulatory committee in December 2021 to ask a series of questions about the CCS plan.

Tom Gosselin, an associate attorney at the Sierra Club, said the organizations were concerned that NextDecade might try to cut costs by using a CCS system only occasionally or by failing to deliver on its promise to install the equipment altogether. come. We think it’s essentially greenwashing because the developer hasn’t really committed to using CCS, but seems to want the benefits of the claim that it will use CCS, Gosselin told DeSmog.

Rio Grande LNG said in a answer published on the Regulatory Commission’s website that the allegations in the letter were unfounded, almost conspiratorial, and showed a serious lack of understanding of CCS technology, global energy markets and commercial agreements. Picking the LNG export project that represents the most aggressive way to capture the CO2 emissions of any US project makes no sense in light of the demonstrated increasing global demand for natural gas, the response said.

As the Vecinos gathering in Port Isabel drew to a close, candles were still burning on an ofrenda with gifts for the spirits of the dead: cigarettes, pan de muerto, and a can of Coca-Cola. The women served spicy chicken salad and tostadas while tending to their children.

I do believe, unfortunately, that there is a possibility of LNG coming here, because there is a lot of money involved. And the corporations have a lot of power, Nuez said. Unfortunately, people see opportunities for new jobs, but they don’t see the other side of the story.

Gaige Davila contributed reporting.