A component of President Joe Biden’s green energy campaign has caught a snag from an unlikely place, environmentalist groups concerned that a series of new green energy plants will exacerbate a local water shortage and threaten the coastal ecosystem.
The Texas port city of Corpus Christi is a potential candidate for up to $1 billion in taxpayer funds under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), a bill passed as part of Mr. Biden’s push that includes funding for green energy projects. If approved, the IIJA funds would go toward creating a regional hub to produce hydrogen fuel, a low-emission energy source created by electrolyzing water.
Finding an appropriate source of water necessary to create the hydrogen fuel could pose a challenge in Corpus Christi, a city experiencing a multi-year drought. Local officials in favor of the hydrogen fuel production hub have favored creating desalination sites throughout the Gulf Coast port city to provide the necessary water supply. Environmentalists, by contrast, have warned that desalination plants could negatively impact coastal ecosystems. Such desalination plants draw in salty water and separate out its saline content before ejecting back out a briny byproduct.
While Corpus Christi is just one of several locations being considered for IIJA-funded hydrogen fuel production hubs, other candidate locations are also potentially problematic for environmental groups.
Desalination Projects Fuel Environmental Concerns
The Sierra Club—a major U.S. environmentalist organization—issued a statement last summer, warning that proposed desalination plants around Corpus Christi “would dump harmful brine into the bay that endangers sea life and the vitality of the coastal waters.”While the United States has hundreds of desalination plants scattered across the country, those mostly treat mildly brackish water from inland sources. Some environmental experts believe transforming much more saline ocean water into fresh water carries an even higher risk.
“It makes no sense to create a purported clean energy source that in turn destroys an entire ecosystem, threatens other economies reliant upon a healthy bay system, and usurps the water supply for residents,” the Coastal Alliance to Protect the Environment, a Corpus Christi-based environmentalist group, told U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in a recent letter.
Of the 33 projects on the Department of Energy’s (DOE) shortlist for new hydrogen production sites, nine are situated in highly water-stressed areas, according to data collected by Rystad Energy consultancy and shared with Reuters. Those locations include Southern California, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico.
“Most of the world’s planned green hydrogen projects are to be located in water-stressed regions,” said Rystad renewable energy analyst Minh Khoi Le.
NTD News reached out to the DOE for comment but did not receive a response by the time this article was published.
In a funding announcement for the hydrogen fuel hubs, the DOE did acknowledge that “water consumption for H2Hubs could place additional stress on regional water resources.”
Who Benefits?
Approving desalination projects could be seen by some environmental activists as a means of expanding industry rather than a path to environmental sustainability.A report released by the Autocase Economic Advisory in November said that over the last decade, nearly 70 percent of the increase in water use in the Corpus Christi area could be attributed to industrial users. Households, commercial users, fire protection, public recreation, and sanitation services accounted for just under six percent of the water use increase over that same time period.
Brandon Marks, a regional campaigner for the Texas Campaign for the Environment, said heavy industrial users have the most to gain from the proposed desalination plants, not residents.
“The whole reason they are pursuing this water is to enable unfettered growth, which would not only harm the bay but harm communities of the bay area,” Mr. Marks said.
Charles Zahn, chairman of the Port of Corpus Christi and a major proponent of desalination, said desalination plants could be a boon for the region, even offering the opportunity to sell water to the city of San Antonio if there was a surplus.
“We need desalination to bring in industry that brings us jobs and increases our tax base,” Mr. Zahn said. “I think water is probably the number one issue in Texas, and we have the ability to help Texas.”
