Members Discuss Net-Zero Targets, Regional Policy, & More at First Quarterly Working Meeting of 2021

Members of the Gulf Coast Carbon Collaborative (GC3) representing 21 companies from the region’s power, energy, engineering and manufacturing sectors met on April 1, 2021 for the group’s first quarterly meeting of the year. Quarterly GC3 meetings are designed to give member companies and partners a holistic view of project progress being made in the various GC3 working groups, and to facilitate discussion on important cross-sectional themes like goal setting, corporate carbon strategy, policy, technology, metrics, and carbon accounting.

The April 1st meeting started with GC3 members discussing the evolving landscape for corporate net-zero targets. Many have established net-zero by 2050 goals. Within broad corporate climate commitments, companies are setting nuanced and detailed emission targets for their various business units based on historical data, total emission portfolios, and technological feasibility. While technology and operational improvements have an obvious role to play in reducing emissions, many companies agree that external elements - policy being the most important - will be key to pushing industry from today’s state-of-the-market to the necessary state-of-the-art.

Strategies in focus for GC3 members focus on emission reduction of operations, and most consider offsets as short-term solutions. Many purchase offsets to support voluntary programs for downstream customers and consider nature-based solutions powerful and affordable options for hitting net zero targets.

GC3 working groups are currently pursuing collaborative project opportunities in carbon capture and storage, electrification, nature-based sequestration, low emission generation technologies, and hydrogen. GC3 working groups meet at least monthly and are open to all members - visit our events page for more information and to get involved.

The April 1st meeting concluded with breakout discussion on cross-sectional themes including near-term opportunities to inform regional policy decisions, cross-cutting tools and technologies, and additional opportunities to align capabilities and assets across GC3 working groups. There is a clear opportunity to leverage the power and unique regional focus of the Gulf Coast Carbon Collaborative to inform and enhance state and federal policy and initiatives. Supporting activities are underway now and will continue into Q2 and Q3.

The Gulf Coast Carbon Collaborative is open to any company in the region looking to reduce their carbon impact through collaborative action. If your company is interested in learning more, get in touch with the US BCSD by clicking here. The US BCSD team is also replicating the Gulf Coast model in the Great Lakes region - visit our new Great Lakes website here to get involved. 

Members present pathways to net zero emission by 2050…

Roadmap to Net Zero Carbon Emission by 2050 by DTE Energy

Net Zero by 2050: Pathways to reducing our emissions by Enbridge

Recent member announcements:

TOTAL has acquired 2.2 GW of solar projects and 600 MW of battery storage assets in Texas, bringing Scope 2 emissions of their U.S. refining and chemical facilities to nearly net zero. [read the press release]

BASF presents roadmap to carbon neutrality. [read the press release] 

Entergy, other utilities create multi-state electric vehicle charging stations network. [read the press release]

AEP recently published their Climate Impact Analysis. [read the press release]

New members Battelle and Talos Energy join the Gulf Coast Carbon Collaborative.