Why Lessons From Houston Matter

Ramanan Krishnamoorti, UH Chief Energy Officer and Aparajita Datta, UH Energy Research Scholar

Most of the conversation around addressing climate change has focused on what the federal government and global community can do. In energy-centric Houston, pledges by oil companies to cut emissions have drawn attention.

But when it comes to the risks of climate change, cities are on the front line, and nowhere is that better illustrated than in Houston and along the Gulf Coast, where much of the nation’s refining and petrochemical manufacturing capacity is concentrated.

With the start of hurricane season and an overheated Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, the issue of our preparedness are front and center.

Like other cities, Houston has worked to promote energy efficiency and a cleaner transportation sector, which are important for addressing climate risks. But cities aren’t equipped to adopt other policy innovations that can quickly and adequately mitigate the impacts of a changing climate.

Climate resilience requires coordinated policies across all levels of government and the private sector, but the nation has fallen short on building this resilience and breaking down silos. Houston tells the story of why it is critical to empower local governments with the right resources and facilitate integration across local, state, and federal jurisdictions to build a more resilient country.

It has been almost five years since Hurricane Harvey battered the city and brought the national economy to a temporary halt, as refineries and petrochemical plants that supply the country with gasoline, jet fuel, and other products were shut down.

The impact on Houston has been far longer lasting. Every extreme weather event since then, from tropical storm Imelda in 2019 to winter storm Uri in 2021, has tested the limits of Houston’s resilience.

As the risks continue to grow, Houston’s future depends on the pace of coordinated policy change and on rethinking how to build resilience within communities and across the systems that connect us.

The Houston Metropolitan Area is expected to add 3 million people, growing from about 7 million to 10 million between now and mid-century. The projected population growth, accompanied by an increasing urban sprawl, will compound the risk presented by flooding—a threat well-known to Houston-area leaders and residents—and two that have received far less attention: sea-level rise and land subsidence.

Currently, about a quarter of the homes in the Greater Houston area face a significant flood risk. Increased precipitation by 2100 means that the annual risk of at least one flood exceeding 7 feet will double. While homeownership in Houston once provided working-class families with the promise of upward mobility, this increased risk will expand the homes experiencing significant or repeated flood damage.

This will push and keep low-income families in neighborhoods that face enduring impacts, increase the cost of homeownership, and make it harder for them to access safe and livable housing.

Simultaneously, sea levels along the Gulf Coast are expected to rise by 5 feet over 1992 levels by 2100. Storm surges are expected to grow 10 times by 2050, resulting in a three-fold increase in the number of homes at risk, potentially displacing 500,000 people.

Population growth in the city will increase demand for water and housing over the next three decades, exerting additional pressure on our land and water resources. The increased groundwater pumping and developed land cover directly affect the magnitude and extent of land subsidence, which in some areas of Houston is already as much as 0.3 feet per decade.

Houston’s extensive commercial infrastructure is threatened, too. The Port of Houston, one of the U.S.’ largest ports in terms of waterborne tonnage, and the Houston Ship Channel are among the most vulnerable to climate and extreme weather risks.

Operational disruptions of the Ship Channel from past extreme weather events have caused economic losses of more than $300 million per day. Similarly, a third of the petrochemical facilities in the region are prone to inundation during a 100-year flood, the frequency of which is now likely to increase to every one to thirty years along the Gulf Coast.

Over the next decade, the cost of climate risks to the Houston Ship Channel and petrochemical facilities in the Gulf Coast region could increase by as much as 800%, while the cost of the failure of critical equipment and the associated punitive fines will be much higher.

In the absence of upgraded standards of engineering, design, and remediation based on realistic risk analysis, not only would property damages and costs be significant, but the functionality of the city’s energy facilities will be threatened. Robust governmental policies in line with high-resolution real-time modeling of facility-level risks are generally lacking and unable to capture the effects of land subsidence and encroachment in watersheds and wetlands.

As a result, the impacts of extreme weather events extend beyond immediate damages, operations, supply chain disruptions, and personnel safety, and have lasting consequences for the neighboring communities and the environment.

Houston’s economic recovery from Harvey has led to the common misperception that the city has fully and successfully bounced back since 2017. Some of the most vulnerable and marginalized Houstonians are still rebuilding from Harvey, and Uri was yet another setback. It held a mirror up to the city that is unprepared and ill-equipped, and, like the rest of the nation, is faced with deep political divergences between local, state, and federal agencies.

What remains unaddressed is that building climate resilience goes beyond immediate recovery. It requires systems-level planning for the unanticipated, equipping local governments with the resources that can serve the unique needs of its people, and facilitating communication with federal and state counterparts to safeguard infrastructure, social systems, and communities.

Houston is the harbinger of America’s future- demographically and climate-wise- and how the city persists and thrives in its efforts to build resilience will shape the nation’s path forward.

UH Energy is the University of Houston’s hub for energy education, research and technology incubation, working to shape the energy future and forge new business approaches in the energy industry.

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