carbon capture

In its 2024 fourth quarter update, NextDecade, a Houston-based liquefied natural gas company, announced its intention to more than double its export capacity at the Rio Grande LNG facility near Brownsville, Texas. Despite NextDecade’s sunny projections, community members and investors in the project’s owner, Global Infrastructure Partners, and its parent company, BlackRock, should be wary of risks associated with the LNG facility. The proposed expansion could further harm local communities, the region, and pose significant risks to investors.

LNG is primarily composed of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with 80 times the atmospheric warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. As originally proposed, this project was estimated to emit the equivalent emissions of 44 coal power plants every year, about 163 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. The newly announced expansion would be projected to emit over 300 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent every year, or the equivalent of the emissions from 83 coal plants annually.