The Texas Legislature must act now on carbon capture and storage

On the surface, getting a law put in place designed to facilitate the enormous economic opportunity Texas has where carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) is concerned would seem like a no-brainer. Recent studies have pointed out that Texas and Louisiana are the two states whose geology presents the biggest potential opportunity to become home to the storage of an enormous volume of captured CO2. Most believe the Gulf Coastal region ranks among the biggest potential CCUS prizes in the world.

Companies like ExxonMobil, Talos Energy, Occidental Petroleum and others have been busy developing plans to exploit Texas’s unique combination of industry, existing infrastructure and geologic pore space as soon as the rules are clarified. And the public is on-board as well. A poll conducted last year by the Carbon Neutral Coalition found that 66% of Texas voters support CCUS in the state, while just 19% oppose it.

The Legislature has one job to do

So, members of the Texas legislature have just one job to do here: Pass legislation that provides clarity on the rules of the road. But things are seldom so simple in Texas politics, especially related to a bill that attracts a wide variety of potential stakeholders to the debate, one in which powerful interests like the state’s big landowners, agricultural interests and the oil and gas and manufacturing industries are all involved.