South Coast Solar

Louisiana, arguably the most vulnerable state in the country to the effects of climate change, leads the nation in industrial generation of carbon dioxide — the gas scientists say is the most serious man-made contributor to the phenomenon.

The inauspicious designation comes courtesy of a team of researchers based at Purdue University who over the past three years have compiled an inventory of CO2 emissions and sources across the country. Project Vulcan, funded primarily by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy, last month released an interactive Google Earth map of its findings, which reflect 2002 emissions data taken largely from federal agency monitoring systems.

That year, Louisiana manufacturing facilities and refineries produced 36.4 million metric tons of CO2, according to Vulcan, slightly more than Texas, where industrial sources generated 35.3 million metric tons of the gas, and more than double that generated in California.

“This is essentially due to the high level of influence of the oil industry,” said Daniel Mendoza, a Purdue graduate student and secondary lead researcher on Project Vulcan, in explaining Louisiana’s ranking. “There’s a lot of refineries and associated industry that go along with it. That is where the majority of your emissions are coming from.”

Combining all sectors, including industrial, residential, transportation and electricity generation, Vulcan ranks Louisiana’s overall carbon dioxide production at No. 8 in the nation.

Liz Davey, program manager for the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane University, said the results are not entirely surprising. Still, she said, the Vulcan report puts into readily accessible form statistics on carbon dioxide emissions and could help the public — and policymakers — better understand challenges faced in reducing greenhouse gases.

“We’re home to a national industry that is very energy intensive,” Davey said. “We need to do as much as we can here in Louisiana, but it’s a national challenge. We’re all going to have to contribute in different ways to addressing it.”

John Atkeison of the New Orleans-based Alliance for Affordable Energy said the Vulcan findings underscore the need for reigning in carbon dioxide emissions and careful consideration of the carbon budgets of projects authorized by state regulators.

“The most immediate thing we need to do is to stop making electricity by burning coal,” Atkeison said, repeating his call to the state Public Service Commission to rescind its approval of Entergy Louisiana’s planned conversion of the natural gas-powered Little Gypsy plant in St. Charles Parish to run on carbon-heavy coal and petroleum coke.

Entergy has said the project will help ensure lower utility costs for customers, but Atkeison’s group has argued new greenhouse gas restrictions anticipated from the federal government will leave customers with significantly higher rates than advertised.

President Obama’s proposed budget calls for a carbon cap and trade system under which companies would be required to pay for the right to pollute. It’s an idea for which Entergy Chairman and CEO J. Wayne Leonard has expressed at least tentative support.

But other industry representatives argue the cap and trade proposal is a misguided strategy — one that will prove harmful to Louisiana’s economy.

The state’s petrochemical and refining sectors “employ many thousands of people,” said Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. He said new carbon regulations would have a disproportionate effect on state industry.

Dan Borné, president of the Louisiana Chemical Association, went even further, calling into question the existence of global warming and condemning efforts to restrict carbon dioxide.

“I don’t consider CO2 a pollutant,” Borné wrote in an e-mail. Federal attempts to classify the gas as such, he said, could favor industries in other parts of the world where carbon remains unregulated.

“If man-made CO2 emissions are truly causing global warming — and there is a substantial and growing group of experts who consider such an assertion faux science — then it’s a worldwide issue and not one that Louisiana alone can address,” he said. Borné called Obama’s cap and trade proposal and related plans “the greatest wealth transfer program in human history” and said they threaten to take billions of dollars away from U.S. industry and cost the country “hundreds of thousands” of manufacturing jobs.

“If the intent is to drive a stake into the heart of the productive capacity of this country, those who are proposing these shackles on manufacturing have hit on a plan that will work,” Borné said.

Briggs, meantime, said greenhouse gas emissions will inevitably drop over time as industry realizes the economic value of carbon dioxide sequestration.

“Companies right now are looking at ways to capture their CO2 and then actually sell it to oil companies” who would in turn inject the gas into old oil fields to recover stranded oil, he said.

Proponents argue this process, known as enhanced oil recovery, would have the ancillary environmental benefit of keeping the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, though skeptics have questioned whether the gas would stay below ground.•

Source: New Orleans City Business