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

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.

Investigating Climate Change Risk of “ Oil and Gas” City: Case of Dumai City, Indonesia

“…The interdependence of each parts in critical infrastructure system shows that disruptions to energy services could affect other sectors (finance & banking, communications & information technology, transportation system, etc) [21]. This is in line with research by [22], which underlines that if sea level rise is left untreated, then it can disrupt critical energy infrastructure and the energy systems connected to it. This disruption will have regional and national implications.…”

Coastal Dam Inundation Assessment for the Yellow River Delta: Measurements, Analysis and Scenario

“…Several previous studies only used the concept of average sea-level, which greatly limits its practical application [17,26,36]. Figure 33 shows that the use of the mean water level reduces the estimated water level, which affects the results of the inundation analysis.…”

“…[3,4]. and destructiveness of marine disasters [17]. The fragile structure of the retaining wall would be destroyed easily if subjected to a serious marine disaster, such as the damage caused by a typhoon.…”

“…Figure 2 shows cracks caused by dam deformation. At the same time, rising sea-levels caused by climate change has led to an increase in the frequency and destructiveness of marine disasters [17]. The fragile structure of the retaining wall would be destroyed easily if subjected to a serious marine disaster, such as the damage caused by a typhoon.…”

“…As a result of the overwhelming damage caused by inundation, many studies related to inundation assessment of coastal areas exist [23][24][25]. These studies can be roughly divided into two categories: the first is the inundation assessment of a fixed land surface with a changing sea-level [17,22,[26][27][28][29][30], which is suitable for some stable coasts; the second is the inundation assessment of a changing land surface with a changing sea-level [16,21,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38], which is suitable for some delta regions. As a result of the overwhelming damage caused by inundation, many studies related to inundation assessment of coastal areas exist [23][24][25].…”