Natural Resources

Volume 9, Issue 4 (April 2018)

ISSN Print: 2158-706X   ISSN Online: 2158-7086

Google-based Impact Factor: 0.89  Citations  h5-index & Ranking

Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Inundation: A Case Study of the Gulf Coast Energy Infrastructure

HTML  XML Download Download as PDF (Size: 7180KB)  PP. 150-174  
DOI: 10.4236/nr.2018.94010    846 Downloads   2,262 Views  Citations

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.

Share and Cite:

Dismukes, D. and Narra, S. (2018) Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Inundation: A Case Study of the Gulf Coast Energy Infrastructure. Natural Resources, 9, 150-174. doi: 10.4236/nr.2018.94010.

Cited by

[1] Climate change impacts on coastal and offshore petroleum infrastructure and the associated oil spill risk: a review
Journal of Marine Science and …, 2022
[2] Coastal Vulnerability Assessment of Bali Province, Indonesia Using Remote Sensing and GIS Approaches
Remote Sensing, 2022
[3] A global analysis of coastal flood risk to the petrochemical distribution network in a changing climate
Resilient Cities and Structures, 2022
[4] Impact of Storm Surge on the Yellow River Delta: Simulation and Analysis
Water, 2022
[5] Investigating Climate Change Risk of “Oil and Gas” City: Case of Dumai City, Indonesia
IOP Conference Series: Earth and …, 2022
[6] A Critical Review of Climate Change on Coastal Infrastructure Systems
2022
[7] A systematic review of civil and environmental infrastructures for coastal adaptation to sea level rise
2020
[8] Coastal Dam Inundation Assessment for the Yellow River Delta: Measurements, Analysis and Scenario
2020
[9] Collaboration Across Boundaries: Reflections on Studying the Sustainability of the Mississippi River Delta as a Coupled Natural-Human System
Collaboration Across Boundaries for Social-Ecological Systems Science, 2019

Journals Menu
Follow SCIRP
Contact us
+1 323-425-8868
customer@scirp.org
WhatsApp +86 18163351462(WhatsApp)
Click here to send a message to me 1655362766
Paper Publishing WeChat

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.