planting climate change impact

Research team lands DOE grant to investigate carbon storage in soil

Two Rice University researchers just received DOE funding for carbon storage research. Photo by Gustavo Raskosky/Rice University

Two researchers at Rice University are digging into how soil is formed with hopes to better understand carbon storage and potential new methods for combating climate change.

Backed by a three-year grant from the Department of Energy, the research is led by Mark Torres, an assistant professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences; and Evan Ramos, a postdoctoral fellow in the Torres lab. Co-investigators include professors and scientists with the Brown University, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

According to a release from Rice, the team aims to investigate the processes that allow soil to store roughly three times as much carbon as organic matter compared to Earth's atmosphere.

“Maybe there’s a way to harness Earth’s natural mechanisms of sequestering carbon to combat climate change,” Torres said in a statement. “But to do that, we first have to understand how soils actually work.”

The team will analyze samples collected from different areas of the East River watershed in Colorado. Prior research has shown that rivers have been great resources for investigating chemical reactions that have taken place as soil is formed. Additionally, research supports that "clay plays a role in storing carbon derived from organic sources," according to Rice.

"We want to know when and how clay minerals form because they’re these big, platy, flat minerals with a high surface area that basically shield the organic carbon in the soil," Ramos said in the statement. "We think they protect that organic carbon from breakdown and allow it to grow in abundance.”

Additionally, the researchers plan to create a model that better quantifies the stabilization of organic carbon over time. According to Torres, the model could provide a basis for predicting carbon dioxide changes in Earth's atmosphere.

"We’re trying to understand what keeps carbon in soils, so we can get better at factoring in their role in climate models and render predictions of carbon dioxide changes in the atmosphere more detailed and accurate,” Torres explained in the statement.

The DOE and Rice have partnered on a number of projects related to the energy transition in recent months. Last week, Rice announced that it would host the Carbon Management Community Summit this fall, sponsored by the DOE, and in partnership with the city of Houston and climate change-focused multimedia company Climate Now.

In July the DOE announced $100 million in funding for its SCALEUP program at an event for more than 100 energy innovators at the university.

Rice also recently opened its 250,000-square-foot Ralph S. O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science. The state-of-the-art facility is the new home for four key research areas at Rice: advanced materials, quantum science and computing, urban research and innovation, and the energy transition.

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A View From HETI

Jarred Shaffer has been named director of the new Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office. Photo via LinkedIn.

As Texas places a $350 million bet on nuclear energy, a budget and policy adviser for Gov. Greg Abbott has been tapped to head the newly created Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office.

Jarred Shaffer is now director of the nuclear energy office, which administers the $350 million Texas Advanced Nuclear Development Fund. The fund will distribute grants earmarked for the development of more nuclear reactors in Texas.

Abbott said Shaffer’s expertise in energy will help Texas streamline nuclear regulations and guide “direct investments to spur a flourishing and competitive nuclear power industry in the Lone Star State. Texas will lead the nuclear renaissance.”

The Texas Nuclear Alliance says growth of nuclear power in the U.S. has stalled while China and Russia have made significant gains in the nuclear sector.

“As Texas considers its energy future, the time has come to invest in nuclear power — an energy source capable of ensuring grid reliability, economic opportunity, and energy and national security,” Reed Clay, president of the alliance, said.

“Texas is entering a pivotal moment and has a unique opportunity to lead. The rise of artificial intelligence and a rebounding manufacturing base will place unprecedented demands on our electricity infrastructure,” Clay added. “Meeting this moment will require consistent, dependable power, and with our business-friendly climate, streamlined regulatory processes, and energy-savvy workforce, we are well-positioned to become the hub for next-generation nuclear development.”

Abbott’s push for increased reliance on nuclear power in Texas comes as public support for the energy source grows. A 2024 survey commissioned by the Texas Public Policy Institute found 55 percent of Texans support nuclear energy. Nationwide support for nuclear power is even higher. A 2024 survey conducted by Bisconti Research showed a record-high 77 percent of Americans support nuclear energy.

Nuclear power accounted for 7.5 percent of Texas’ electricity as of 2024, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, but made up a little over 20 percent of the state’s clean energy. Currently, four traditional reactors produce nuclear power at two plants in Texas. The total capacity of the four nuclear reactors is nearly 5,000 megawatts.

Because large nuclear plants take years to license and build, small factory-made modular reactors will meet much of the shorter-term demand for nuclear energy. A small modular reactor has a power capacity of up to 300 megawatts. That’s about one-third of the generating power of a traditional nuclear reactor, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A report from BofA Global Research predicts the global market for small nuclear reactors could reach $1 trillion by 2050. These reactors are cheaper and safer than their larger counterparts, and take less time to build and produce fewer CO2 emissions, according to the report.

Global nuclear capacity must triple in size by 2050 to keep up with energy demand tied to the rise of power-gobbling AI data centers, and to accomplish decarbonization and energy security goals, the BofA report says. Data centers could account for nine percent of U.S. electricity demand by 2035, up from about four percent today, according to BloombergNEF.

As the Energy Capital of the World, Houston stands to play a pivotal role in the evolution of small and large nuclear reactors in Texas and around the world. Here are just three of the nuclear power advancements that are happening in and around Houston:

Houston is poised to grab a big chunk of the more than 100,000 jobs and more than $50 billion in economic benefits that Jimmy Glotfelty, a former member of the Texas Public Utility Commission, predicts Texas will gain from the state’s nuclear boom. He said nuclear energy legislation signed into law this year by Abbott will provide “a leg up on every other state” in the race to capitalize on the burgeoning nuclear economy.

“Everybody in the nuclear space would like to build plants here in Texas,” Inside Climate News quoted Glotfelty as saying. “We are the low-regulatory, low-cost state. We have the supply chain. We have the labor.”

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