Houston Carbon Emissions Essay

The Houston city government, against all odds, has made significant progress in this endeavor. After being named the number one emitter of carbon in 2007, Houston, under mayors Annise Parker and Sylvester Turner, have made tremendous strides in managing the risks associated with these massive amounts of carbon emissions, while skillfully avoiding the alienation of the industries that have built the city. They have done so with numerous different incentive based programs like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification program, and the luring of investors with generous incentives that have led to their cutting edge carbon capture system for clean coal plants. The lengths to which Houston has gone to implement these new programs has had an incredible effect

Countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia that are looking for new ways to make their oil rich economies eco-friendlier could learn a lot from the case study of Houston, TX. While in a harsh anti-regulation environment in deep red Texas, Houston has still managed to slash their carbon emissions by a third in just seven years. They have proven that economic efficiency does not necessarily need to be sacrificed for greater environmental regulations. Structuring their policies around the cost structure of local energy firms and providing financial incentives for programs like LEED and WA Parish Generating Station’s Carbon capture systems have gone a long way in mitigating the threat of carbon emissions within their city limits. The fiscally conservative, anti-regulation coalition in Texas has been mum on Houston’s efforts because the policies have had virtually no downsides. While there are still other efforts that Houston can still make to improve on their progress, like the aforementioned mobile source polluter policies, the city’s stationary source programs have been by all accounts a huge