Abstract
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.
Highlights
The exact amount of future sea level rise (SLR) is uncertain [1] [2], but the scientific community is reasonably certain that sea-level rise (SLR) and its acceleration, in conjunction with other natural hazards, will pose increasing challenges to coastal communities and infrastructure
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 vulnerable to inundation than other forms of critical energy infrastructure
The inundation analysis shows that an additional 19,496 km2 of coastal Gulf is at risk because of inundation under a 0.61 m (2 ft) SLR scenario compared to the base scenario where there is no risk from SLR
Summary
The exact amount of future sea level rise (SLR) is uncertain [1] [2], but the scientific community is reasonably certain that SLR and its acceleration, in conjunction with other natural hazards, will pose increasing challenges to coastal communities and infrastructure. SLR is expected to lead to an increase in storm frequency and intensity This will likely result in an increase in damage exposure for a wide range of critical energy infrastructure that includes natural gas and crude oil pipelines, petrochemical facilities, natural gas processing facilities, crude oil refineries, fractionation units, among others. These facilities cannot be shut-down and moved to avoid SLR damage exposure since they are long-lived with, in most instances, a considerable amount of remaining economic life. Recent SLR projections based on semi-empirical [21] or process-based methods [22] attempted to improve the confidence associated with such projections, but the inherent probability models and confidence levels connected with such projections are not applied to risk analysis
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