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Carbon capture, utilization and storage has emerged in recent years as one of the key components of the U.S. energy transition, and Louisiana is poised to lead the charge.
That’s according to LSU’s Andrew Maas, who spoke about the future of energy in Louisiana and beyond at the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge’s meeting Wednesday.
Maas, who serves as LSU’s associate vice president for research overseeing the university’s Innovation and Ecosystem Development office, said Louisiana is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the burgeoning CCUS industry thanks in large part to its existing infrastructure and its favorable geology.
“Louisiana has a lot of opportunity,” Maas said. “We just need to execute.”
For those unfamiliar, CCUS involves capturing CO2 from sources like industrial facilities and power plants and either storing it permanently underground or reusing it in the production of other materials and resources. Industry leaders have pointed to CCUS as a way to decarbonize while also creating and maintaining jobs.
When it comes to infrastructure, Maas said Louisiana’s already-expansive network of pipelines lends itself perfectly to further CCUS development. Some 50,000 miles of integrated pipelines crisscross every major highway, railroad and navigable waterway in the state, according to Louisiana Economic Development.
That pipeline network enables CO2 to be transported within Louisiana and to and from other states at a scale that cannot be replicated elsewhere.
“We have a transportation network for gases and liquids that nobody else in the world has,” Maas said.
As for geology, Louisiana’s confining layers of shale and clay, deep layers of sand and minimal seismic activity add up to make it an ideal location for the underground storage of CO2.
“We have the No. 1 geologic storage capacity in the country,” Maas said.
Maas also serves as principal investigator for the Future Use of Energy in Louisiana team, a massive LSU-led partnership that earlier this year received a $160 million National Science Foundation grant—the largest grant ever awarded by the NSF.
The partnership will primarily focus on Louisiana’s energy transition and the decarbonization of the state’s industrial corridor, but it also has broad implications for the U.S. energy sector as a whole. Many of the partnership’s initiatives will be geared toward developing cutting-edge CCUS technologies and beefing up Louisiana’s workforce to meet future labor demand.
