Houston Poised to Address World’s Energy Challenges
(HOUSTON, TX) Today, Energy challenges facing the world grow daily but Houston is uniquely positioned to play a key roll in mitigating these hurdles. Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Nick Lampson (D-TX), held a field hearing at Rice University to explore how the energy industry and cities like Houston are working to address challenges in areas such as energy supply and security, global climate change, and rapid economic growth.
"Oil and gas will absolutely continue to play a vital role for the foreseeable future," said Lampson. "We hope to have better alternatives soon, but until then we should not be at all bashful in aggressively pursuing the cutting-edge technologies that will unlock previously unrecoverable hydrocarbon reserves."
As the sixth largest metropolitan area in the United States, the greater Houston region continues to undergo rapid economic expansion and population growth. In every decade since 1850, the City of Houston’s population has grown by at least 29 percent. However, with this rapid development come immense challenges to consumers, city planners, local energy providers, and local industries that must stay competitive in an increasingly global marketplace.
The challenge for all stakeholders lies in the need for America to obtain more energy from a variety of domestic sources, enhance the energy efficiency of communities and industry, and become less reliant on energy sources and technologies that have an adverse effect on the environment. The push for new technologies is especially urgent given the geopolitical and market forces that threaten global energy supplies and economic stability, finite fossil fuel reserves, the direct and indirect costs of energy to consumers, the looming threat of global climate change, and probable regulation of carbon dioxide emissions.
Houston is poised to be a leader in this pursuit largely because of its current and historic positioning as the "energy capital of the world." Despite the diverse industry that contributes to Houston’s economy, energy remains the largest sector accounting for an estimated 48 percent of the region’s employment. According to estimates by the Greater Houston Partnership, Houston’s energy industry includes the headquarters for 17 Fortune 500 energy companies, more than 3,600 energy related establishments, 13 of the nation’s 20 largest natural gas transmission companies, 600 exploration and production firms, more than 170 pipeline operators and hundreds of energy-sector product manufacturers.
Houston has evolved into a global oil-technology development and distribution center, providing advanced oil and gas technologies for development of oil fields in the Middle East, the North Sea, Malaysia, Indonesia, South America and West Africa. While it will continue to be a center for the petroleum industry, Houston is rapidly becoming a focal point for renewable energy and energy efficiency technology development.
"We must embrace new technologies that can make our use of fossil fuels cleaner and more efficient," said Lampson. "Diversifying our energy supply by funding research and development, and tapping into the science being conducted by NASA, must be part of a national energy strategy."
Wind energy is one of the most promising and commercially viable renewable resources. The wind industry in Texas grew substantially after a 1999 state law that required a base percentage of electricity sold by utilities in the state to be generated from renewable sources. The utilization of renewables and end-use energy efficiency measures will be further optimized by the deployment of "Smart Grid" technologies that integrate new communications and control functions into the electricity distribution grid.
Located at the center of a nationwide fuel distribution and agricultural transportation network, Houston is also quickly becoming a hub for the biofuels industry with several of the country’s major biofuels firms located in the region.
As offshore production declines in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, industry is looking to produce from oil and gas resources in deep-water (depths of 200-1,500 meters) and ultra-deepwater (depths greater than 1,500 meters). According to the Minerals Management Service, untapped fields on the outer continental shelf could account for 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Lead by Subcommittee Chairman Lampson, in May 2006 the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA), located in Sugar Land, was selected to administer R&D contracts for the Ultra-Deepwater and Unconventional Natural Gas and Other Petroleum Resources Program established in Section 999 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The law mandated new oil and gas research and development program with funding totaling nearly $500 million over ten years derived from royalties, rents, and bonuses from federal onshore and offshore oil and gas leases.
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