New endangered listing for rare lizard could slow oil and gas drilling in Texas, New Mexico

to save the species

The lizard already is “functionally extinct” across 47 percent of its range. Photo via Getty Images

Federal wildlife officials declared a rare lizard in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas an endangered species Friday, citing future energy development, sand mining and climate change as the biggest threats to its survival in one of the world’s most lucrative oil and natural gas basins.

“We have determined that the dunes sagebrush lizard is in danger of extinction throughout all of its range,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. It concluded that the lizard already is “functionally extinct” across 47 percent of its range.

Much of the the 2.5-inch-long (6.5-centimeter), spiny, light brown lizard's remaining habitat has been fragmented, preventing the species from finding mates beyond those already living close by, according to biologists.

“Even if there were no further expansion of the oil and gas or sand mining industry, the existing footprint of these operations will continue to negatively affect the dunes sagebrush lizard into the future,” the service said in its final determination, published in the Federal Register.

The decision caps two decades of legal and regulatory skirmishes between the U.S. government, conservationists and the oil and gas industry. Environmentalists cheered the move, while industry leaders condemned it as a threat to future production of the fossil fuels.

The decision provides a “lifeline for survival” for a unique species whose “only fault has been occupying a habitat that the fossil fuel industry has been wanting to claw away from it,” said Bryan Bird, the Southwest director for Defenders of Wildlife.

“The dunes sagebrush lizard spent far too long languishing in a Pandora’s box of political and administrative back and forth even as its population was in free-fall towards extinction,” Bird said in a statement.

The Permian Basin Petroleum Association and the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association expressed disappointment, saying the determination flies in the face of available science and ignores longstanding state-sponsored conservation efforts across hundreds of thousands of acres and commitment of millions of dollars in both states.

“This listing will bring no additional benefit for the species and its habitat, yet could be detrimental to those living and working in the region,” PBPA President Ben Shepperd and NMOGA President and CEO Missi Currier said in a joint statement, adding that they view it as a federal overreach that can harm communities.

Scientists say the lizards are found only in the Permian Basin, the second-smallest range of any North American lizard. The reptiles live in sand dunes and among shinnery oak, where they feed on insects and spiders and burrow into the sand for protection from extreme temperatures.

Environmentalists first petitioned for the species' protection in 2002, and in 2010 federal officials found that it was warranted. That prompted an outcry from some members of Congress and communities that rely on oil and gas development for jobs and tax revenue.

Several Republican lawmakers sent a letter to officials in the Obama administration asking to delay a final decision, and in 2012, federal officials decided against listing the dunes sagebrush lizard.

Then-U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said at the time that the decision was based on the “best available science” and because of voluntary conservation agreements in place in New Mexico and Texas.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said in Friday's decision that such agreements “have provided, and continue to provide, many conservation benefits” for the lizard, but “based on the information we reviewed in our assessment, we conclude that the risk of extinction for the dunes sagebrush lizard is high despite these efforts.”

Among other things, the network of roads will continue to restrict movement and facilitate direct mortality of dunes sagebrush lizards from traffic, it added, while industrial development “will continue to have edge effects on surrounding habitat and weaken the structure of the sand dune formations.”

The Sea Port Oil Terminal being developed off Freeport, Texas, will be able to load two supertankers at once, with an export capacity of 2 million barrels of crude oil per day. Photo via Getty Images

Houston company's $1.8B project off Texas coast gets Biden administration amid environmental protests

big oil

In a move that environmentalists called a betrayal, the Biden administration has approved the construction of a deepwater oil export terminal off the Texas coast that would be the largest of its kind in the United States.

The Sea Port Oil Terminal being developed off Freeport, Texas, will be able to load two supertankers at once, with an export capacity of 2 million barrels of crude oil per day. The $1.8 billion project by Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners received a deepwater port license from the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration this week, the final step in a five-year federal review.

Environmentalists denounced the license approval, saying it contradicted President Joe Biden's climate agenda and would lead to “disastrous” planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to nearly 90 coal-fired power plants. The action could jeopardize Biden's support from environmental allies and young voters already disenchanted by the Democratic administration's approval last year of the massive Willow oil project in Alaska.

“Nothing about this project is in alignment with President Biden’s climate and environmental justice goals,'' said Kelsey Crane, senior policy advocate at Earthworks, an environmental group that has long opposed the export terminal.

“The communities that will be impacted by (the oil terminal) have once again been ignored and will be forced to live with the threat of more oil spills, explosions and pollution,'' Crane said. "The best way to protect the public and the climate from the harms of oil is to keep it in the ground.”

In a statement after the license was approved, the Maritime Administration said the project meets a number of congressionally mandated requirements, including extensive environmental reviews and a federal determination that the port's operation is in the national interest.

“While the Biden-Harris administration is accelerating America’s transition to a clean energy future, action is also being taken to manage the transition in the near term,'' said the agency, which is nicknamed MARAD.

The administration's multiyear review included consultation with at least 20 federal, state and local agencies, MARAD said. The agency ultimately determined that the project would have no significant effect on the production or consumption of U.S. crude oil.

“Although the (greenhouse gas) emissions associated with the upstream production and downstream end use of the crude oil to be exported from the project may represent a significant amount of GHG emissions, these emissions largely already occur as part of the U.S. crude oil supply chain,'' the agency said in an email to The Associated Press. “Therefore, the project itself is likely to have minimal effect on the current GHG emissions associated with the overall U.S. crude oil supply chain.''

Environmental groups scoffed at that claim.

“The Biden administration must stop flip-flopping on fossil fuels,'' said Cassidy DiPaola of Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit group that opposes the use of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.

“Approving the Sea Port Oil Terminal after pausing LNG exports is not just bad news for our climate, it’s incoherent politics,'' DiPaola said. Biden “can’t claim to be a climate leader one day and then turn around and grant a massive handout to the oil industry the next. It’s time for President Biden to listen to the overwhelming majority of voters who want to see a shift away from fossil fuels, not a doubling down on dirty and deadly energy projects.''

DiPaola was referring to the administration's January announcement that it is delaying consideration of new natural gas export terminals in the United States, even as gas shipments to Europe and Asia have soared since Russia invaded Ukraine.

The decision, announced at the start of the 2024 presidential election year, aligned the Democratic president with environmentalists who fear the huge increase in exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is locking in potentially catastrophic planet-warming emissions even as Biden has pledged to cut climate pollution in half by 2030.

Industry groups and Republicans have condemned the pause, saying LNG exports stabilize global energy markets, support thousands of American jobs and reduce global greenhouse emissions by transitioning countries away from coal, a far dirtier fossil fuel.

Enterprise CEO Jim Teague hailed the oil project's approval. The terminal will provide “a more environmentally friendly, safe, efficient and cost-effective way to deliver crude oil to global markets,'' he said in a statement.

The project will include two pipelines to carry crude from shore to the deepwater port, reducing the need for ship-to-ship transfers of oil. The terminal is expected to begin operations by 2027.

Since the project was first submitted for federal review in 2019, “Enterprise has worked diligently with various federal, state and local authorities, and participated in multiple public meetings that have allowed individuals and stakeholder groups to learn about the project and provide their comments,'' including some studies that have been translated into Spanish and Vietnamese, the company said in a statement. More than half of Freeport's 10,600 residents are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, hailed the license approval as “a major victory for Texas’s energy industry" and said the Biden administration had delayed the Sea Port terminal and other projects for years.

“After tireless work by my office and many others to secure this deepwater port license, I’m thrilled that we’re helping bring more jobs to Texas and greater energy security to America and our allies,'' Cruz said in a statement. “That this victory was delayed by years of needless bureaucratic dithering shows why we need broader permitting reform in this country.''

The oil export facility, one of several license applications under federal review, is located 30 miles offshore of Brazoria County, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico.

The license approval followed a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week dismissing claims by environmental groups that federal agencies had failed to uphold federal environmental laws in their review of the project.

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Greentown and partners name 10 startups to carbontech accelerator

new cohort

The Carbon to Value Initiative (C2V Initiative)—a collaboration between Greentown Labs, NYU Tandon School of Engineering's Urban Future Lab and Fraunhofer USA—has announced 10 startup participants to join the fifth cohort of its carbontech accelerator.

The six-month accelerator aims to help cleantech startups advance their commercialization efforts through access to the C2V Initiative’s Carbontech Leadership Council (CLC). The invitation-only council consists of corporate and nonprofit leaders from organizations like Shell, TotalEnergies, XPRIZE, L’Oréal and others who “foster commercialization opportunities and identify avenues for technology validation, testing, and demonstration,” according to a release from Greentown

“The No. 1 reason startups engage with Greentown is to find customers, grow their businesses, and accelerate impact—and the Carbon to Value Initiative delivers exactly that,” Georgina Campbell Flatter, CEO of Greentown, said in a news release. “It’s a powerful example of how meaningful engagement between entrepreneurs and industry turns innovation into commercial traction.”

The C2V Initiative received more than 100 applications from 33 countries, representing a variety of carbontech innovations. The 10 startups chosen for the 2025 fifth cohort include:

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sora Fuel, which integrates direct-air capture with direct conversion of the captured carbon into syngas for production of sustainable aviation fuel
Brooklyn-based Arbon, which develops a humidity-swing carbon-capture solution by capturing CO₂ from the air or point-source without heat or pressure
New York-based Cella Mineral Storage, which works to develop subsurface mineralization technology with integrated software, enabling new ways to sequester CO2 underground
Germany-based ICODOS, which helps transform emissions into value through a point-source carbon capture and methanol synthesis process in a single, modularized system
Vancouver-based Lite-1, which uses advanced biomanufacturing processes to produce circular colourants for use in textiles, cosmetics and food
London-based Mission Zero Technologies, which has developed and deployed an electrified, direct-air carbon capture solution that employs both liquid-adsorption and electrochemical technologies
Kenya-based Octavia Carbon, which develops a solid-adsorption-based, direct-air carbon capture solution that utilizes geothermal heat
California-based Rushnu, which combines point-source carbon capture with chemical production, turning salt and CO2 into chlorine-based chemicals and minerals
Brooklyn-based Turnover Labs, which develops modular electrolyzers that transform raw, industrial CO2 emissions into chemical building blocks, without capture or purification
Ontario-based Universal Matter, which develops a Flash Joule Heating process that converts carbon waste such as end-of-life plastics, tires or industrial waste into graphene

The C2V Initiative is based on Greentown Go, Greentown’s open-innovation program. The C2V Initiative has supported 35 startups that have raised over $600 million in follow-on funding.

Read about the 2024 cohort here.

CenterPoint gets go-ahead for $2.9B upgrade of Houston grid

grid resiliency

Texas utility regulators have given the green light for Houston-based CenterPoint Energy to spend $2.9 billion on strengthening its Houston-area electric grid to better withstand extreme weather.

The cost of the plan is nearly $3 billion below what CenterPoint initially proposed to the Public Utility Commission of Texas.

In early 2025, CenterPoint unveiled a $5.75 billion plan to upgrade its Houston-area power system from 2026 through 2028. But the price tag dropped to $2.9 billion as part of a legal settlement between CenterPoint and cities in the utility’s service area.

Sometime after the first quarter of next year, CenterPoint customers in the Houston area will pay an extra $1 a month for the next three years to cover costs of the resiliency plan. CenterPoint serves 2.9 million customers in a 12-county territory anchored by Houston.

CenterPoint says the plan is part of its “commitment to building the most resilient coastal grid in the country.”

A key to improving CenterPoint’s local grid will be stepping up management of high-risk vegetation (namely trees), which ranks as the leading cause of power outages in the Houston area. CenterPoint says it will “go above and beyond standard vegetation management by implementing an industry-leading three-year trim cycle,” clearing vegetation from thousands of miles of power lines.

The utility company says its plan aims to prevent Houston-area power outages in case of hurricanes, floods, extreme temperatures, tornadoes, wildfires, winter storms, and other extreme weather events.

CenterPoint says the plan will:

Improve systemwide resilience by 30 percent
Expand the grid’s power-generating capacity. The company expects power demand in the Houston area to grow 2 percent per year for the foreseeable future.
Save about $50 million per year on storm cleanup costs
Avoid outages for more than 500,000 customers in the event of a disaster like last year’s Hurricane Beryl
Provide 130,000 stronger, more storm-resilient utility poles
Put more than 50 percent of the power system underground
Rebuild or upgrade more than 2,200 transmission towers
Modernize 34,500 spans of underground cables

In the Energy Capital of the World, residents “expect and deserve an electric system that is safe, reliable, cost-effective, and resilient when they need it most. We’re determined to deliver just that,” Jason Wells, president and CEO of CenterPoint, said in January.

Solidec partners with Australian company for clean hydrogen peroxide pilot

rare earth pilot

Solidec has partnered with Australia-based Lynas Rare Earth, an environmentally responsible producer of rare earth oxides and materials, to reduce emissions from hydrogen peroxide production.

The partnership marks a milestone for the Houston-based clean chemical manufacturing startup, as it would allow the company to accelerate the commercialization of its hydrogen peroxide generation technology, according to a news release.

"This collaboration is a major milestone for Solidec and a catalyst for sustainability in rare earths," Yang Xia, co-founder and CTO of Solidec, said in the release. "Solidec's technology can reduce the carbon footprint of hydrogen peroxide production by up to 90%. By combining our generators with the scale of a global leader in rare earths, we can contribute to a more secure, sustainable supply of critical minerals."

Through the partnership, Solidec will launch a pilot program of its autonomous, on-site generators at Lynas's facility in Australia. Solidec's generators extract molecules from water and air and convert them into carbon emission-free chemicals and fuels, like hydrogen peroxide. The generators also eliminate the need for transport, storage and permitting, making for a simpler, more efficient process for producing hydrogen peroxide than the traditional anthraquinone process.

"Hydrogen peroxide is essential to rare earth production, yet centralized manufacturing adds cost and complexity," Ryan DuChanois, co-founder and CEO of Solidec, added in the release. "By generating peroxide directly on-site, we're reinventing the chemical supply chain for efficiency, resilience, and sustainability."

The companies report that the pilot is expected to generate 10 tons of hydrogen peroxide per year.

If successful, the pilot would serve as a model for large-scale deployments of Solidec's generators across Lynas' operations—and would have major implications for the high-performance magnet, electric vehicles, wind turbine, and advanced electronics industries, which rely on rare earth elements.

"This partnership with Solidec is another milestone on the path to achieving our Towards 2030 vision," Luke Darbyshire, general manager of R&I at Lynas, added. "Working with Solidec allows us to establish transformative chemical supply pathways that align with our innovation efforts, while contributing to our broader vision for secure, sustainable rare earth supply chains."

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