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LAND OF SUGAR Pranav Subhash has seen documentaries about carbon capture, which captures carbon dioxide and then injects it deep into the ground or exploits it for industrial purposes. Limiting the amount of the gas that enters the Earth’s atmosphere, where it fuels the greenhouse effect and ultimately causes global warming, is the goal.
“I’m excited to learn more about a technology that is decades old and starting to gain more traction across the globe and in a region that is one of the world’s foremost energy producers and polluters,” said the 13-year-old student at Dulles Middle School near Houston, whose mother works as a chemist for the Environmental Protection Agency.
“If we don’t change now, the world, it isn’t going to be a very bright place anymore,” Subhash stated. “If this generation learns about it, then we can actually do something about it.”
That chance will soon be available to Subhash and his Dulles classmates as well as a few other Gulf Coast middle schoolers. As part of their current state-mandated curriculum about the carbon cycle and how humans affect it, three middle school teachers in the Houston and Corpus Christi areas, including his eighth-grade science teacher Julia Dolive, will be teaching lessons about carbon capture and storage this spring.
The University of Texas at Austin’s geosciences school, which is in charge of a six-university partnership known as the Texas-Louisiana Carbon Management Community, assisted the teachers in creating the curriculum. Other participating institutions include Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Texas A&M-Kingsville, Louisiana State University, the University of Houston, and Lamar University in Beaumont.
Teachers are leading a grassroots educational effort to spread knowledge about carbon capture and storage and its potential advantages, aided by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and a small but expanding network of science teachers. Training the upcoming generation of energy sector personnel and eventually lowering industry-caused carbon emissions are the objectives in the fight against climate change.
Leading the effort is Susan Hovorka, a senior research professor at UT-Austin. “The more we learn, the more reason there is to be very anxious about the unmitigated buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” she said. “Of course, there are a number of technologies, and we need all of them.”
Obstacles to come
According to Hovorka, there is skepticism regarding carbon capture among environmental groups who see the technology as a “excuse to continue burning fossil fuels,” as well as within the energy sector due to the practice’s high cost. However, Hovorka stated that the technology has been successful and is “safe by design.” There are also concerns regarding whether carbon dioxide injected into the ground would remain there eternally.
To “demystify” carbon capture and storage is another fundamental objective of the program, according to UH vice president of energy and innovation Ramanan Krishnamoorti.
“As long as we keep vilifying the sources of energy rather than vilifying the emissions, we’re going to have a problem,” he stated. “There is not an energy source today that is truly clean, in the sense of not having any carbon emissions.”
The fact that some people continue to doubt the veracity of man-made climate change presents another difficulty. For instance, last year, the trustees of Cy-Fair ISD, which is located close to Houston, decided to eliminate any mention of climate change from its middle school science textbooks, citing the issue as “controversial.”
One reason for this is because, although statewide adoption might broaden their reach, the carbon capture and storage classes are being marketed directly to teachers in both public and private schools rather than the State Board of Education, which establishes curriculum standards for Texas’ public schools. Stephanie Hurst, a science teacher at Cleveland Middle School, northeast of Houston, and Dolive, who teaches at Dulles Middle School, a campus of Fort Bend ISD, both reported receiving permission to teach the classes in their respective school districts.
According to Hovorka, the teachings will be presented in a plain but nuanced way. To enhance the curriculum and make it more accessible and comprehensible, comic book-style visuals have been developed.
“One of the reasons why we’re approaching it the way we’re approaching it is we’re not talking about climate change per se,” Hovorka stated. “That’s the objective, the goal of these actions, of sure, but it’s not the main focus. We’re discussing the carbon cycle, how chemistry may be used in engineering, and how to obtain employment.
The industry of the future?
The coal-fired W.A. Parish Plant in Fort Bend County is the only carbon capture facility in operation in the Houston region. The $1 billion Petra Nova facility there, which opened in 2017, uses enhanced oil recovery to help extract more oil by trapping carbon dioxide and sending it to a nearby oil field.
According to Dave Knox, a spokesman for JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration, the company that owns the carbon capture facility, only a “very small amount” of carbon is absorbed in comparison to the power plant’s overall emissions. Nonetheless, he claimed that the Petra Nova operation demonstrated the technology’s “tremendous potential” and cost-effectiveness.
“It’s a very small amount right now,” Knox stated. “But it’s shown that it works and has the potential to reduce dramatically more as it is built out.”
According to Krishnamoorti, over 4 million tons of carbon dioxide are captured annually in the Houston area, whereas approximately 50 million tons are captured globally each year. According to him, it is anticipated that the latter amount will increase to 10 million tons by 2032 and to 50 million tons by 2050.
This is because there are a number of more carbon capture and storage projects underway. According to the Environmental Integrity Project, about 90 of these projects are planned in Texas and Louisiana, the majority of which are along the Gulf Coast.
According to Krishnamoorti, he is working with junior colleges in the area to help build a pipeline of future employees and consulting with nearby energy corporations to explore prospective career paths in the carbon capture sector. According to him, UH already offers a micro-accreditation program that includes instruction on carbon capture and storage.
Hurst, a science teacher in Cleveland ISD, stated, “We need to be able to introduce them to something that is going to be blowing up economically, since our schools are Title I and the majority of kids won’t be going to college.” “Being able to bring it to my students and potentially helping them in their future, it’s just incredible.”
Unrealized possibilities
Senior lawyer Abel Russ of the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit organization, expressed doubts about the likelihood of many of the proposed carbon capture projects along the Gulf Coast coming to fruition. He also questioned the technology’s efficacy and stated that the carbon capture sector is not yet adequately regulated by the government, adding that it would be ideal to move away from fossil fuels.
However, Russ stated that he supports the educational endeavor, just like Knox with JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration.
“I’m absolutely 100 percent supportive of teaching kids about climate change and thinking about all the potential solutions,” Russ stated. “This is unquestionably something that need to be explored as a possible remedy, in my opinion. They’ve just gotten ahead of themselves a bit too far, in my opinion.
Whether children in Cleveland, Sugar Land, or elsewhere will embrace the carbon capture teachings is still up in the air. 13-year-old Pahy’tton Williams, a student in the eighth grade at Dulles, remarked that some of her peers “might find it boring.”
However, what they discover may inspire others. Another 13-year-old at Dulles, Aditi Bhambhani, stated that although becoming a doctor is her desire, she might choose to work in the energy sector instead.
When she said, “I’m excited to learn about it,” “I’d like to know more about the planet Earth. In my opinion, science is pretty vast. There are a lot of subjects to study. However, I believe that safeguarding the Earth is one subject that isn’t covered in detail.
