Governor John Bel Edwards is urging state officials to get on board with alternative energy. An LSU professor says Louisiana energy companies need to find to deal in both tradition and green energy.
"I think there's really two paths we can go down," said Greg Upton, interim executive director of the LSU Center for Energy Studies.
Upton told WWL's Tommy Tucker that the state could spend a lot of money trying to decarbonize the oil and gas industry, but that could lead to the state not being competitive in the global market place if it's too aggressive in doing so. Upton also said if the state completely ignores the changes in the energy sector, it could to customers abandoning the state's energy companies.
"How do we strike that balance?" Upton asked. "How do we think about a way to stay cost competitive (and) stay competitive internationally while at the same time reducing our emissions intensity so we kind of check both of those boxes and stay competitive into the future?"
Upton says answering those questions will be vital to the survival of the Louisiana energy industry. Specifically, Upton says oil and gas companies need to find ways to reduce their carbon footprint.
"Purchasers are wanting to know what is your carbon intensity and comparing that to other competitors across the globe," Upton said.
He added that if those companies don't embrace alternative energy sources and reduce their carbon footprint, they could lose business to companies based in Texas.
"Like Louisiana, they've got lots of investments going on right now, and they've actually gone a step farther and subsidized things like renewable energy in ways that Louisiana has not," Upton said of Texas. "I don't think it's an either/or--oh, you either have to go green and kind of abandon oil and gas. In fact, I think it's kind of the opposite. If we want to have these sectors we have in Louisiana today in 20, 30, (or) 40 years from now, we have to think about how we're going to reduce the emissions of those sectors."
