The United States (U.S.) Gulf Coast is a prominent
global energy hub with a set of highly integrated critical energy
infrastructure that rivals, if not surpasses, any comparable set of infrastructure anywhere in the world. Past
extreme weather events in the region have led to critical energy infrastructure
disruptions with national and global implications. Future sea-level rise (SLR),
coupled with other natural hazards, will lead to a significant increase in
energy infrastructure damage exposure. This research assesses coastal energy
infrastructure that is at risk from various fixed SLR outcomes and scenarios.
The results indicate that natural gas processing plants that treat and process
natural gas before moving it into the interstate natural gas transmission
system may be particularly vulnerable to inundation than other forms of
critical energy infrastructure. Under certain SLR assumptions, as much as six
Bcfd (eight percent of all U.S. natural gas processing capacity) could be
inundated. More extreme SLR exposure assumptions result in greater levels of
energy infrastructure capacity exposure including as much as 39 percent of all
U.S. refining capacity based on current operating levels. This research and its
results show that while fossil fuel industries are often referenced as part of
the climate change problem, these industries will likely be more than
proportionally exposed to the negative impacts of various climate change
outcomes relative to other industrial sectors of the U.S. economy. This has
important implications for the U.S. and global energy supplies and costs, as
well as for the U.S. regional economies reliant on coastal energy
infrastructure and its supporting industries.
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