The Houston Texans’ plan to offset its pollution is backed by Big Oil and Gas
Author: Justin Casterline
The Houston Texans, the NFL team reppin’ the city that’s arguably the oil and gas capital of the world, says it wants to go green. So of course the team is working with an oil and gas giant to try to tackle climate change. A subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corporation called 1PointFive announced a new agreement and sponsorship with the Houston Texans on Friday. 1PointFive is Occidental’s huge new initiative to pull planet-heating carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in an effort to limit climate change. It can then sell credits for each ton of CO2 it captures to other companies trying to offset their own climate pollution. Essentially, Occidental can now make money from both its oil and gas business - and from emissions generated by burning that oil and gas. While the goal is for the team to cancel out the effects of its pollution, the Texans are actually funding a carbon removal project that’s still under construction. There’s no benefit to the environment just yet: the project broke ground in August 2022 and isn’t slated to come online until late 2024. It’s expected to be one of the first large-scale carbon removal facilities of its kind and will be a big test for the relatively new technology.