Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Thursday that his administration plans to embark on an ambitious expansion of coastal restoration and flood protection efforts that for the first time will target greenhouse gas emissions by Louisiana industry as a way of reducing future sea level rise.

“Louisiana will not just accept or adapt to climate change impacts,” said Edwards, flanked by top aides, during a news conference at the LSU Center for River Studies in Baton Rouge. “Louisiana will do its part to address climate change.

“Science tells us that rising sea level will become the biggest challenge we face, threatening to overwhelm our best efforts to protect and restore our coast. Science also tells us that sea level rise is being driven by global greenhouse gas emissions.”

While such statements might attract scant notice if they were uttered by a governor of another state, Edwards’ speech marked the first time a Louisiana governor had announced such intentions.

The energy and petrochemical sectors have great sway over Louisiana’s economy – and over what happens in the halls of the state Capitol – so the new direction Edwards signaled comes with some political peril.

On the other hand, Edwards was recently re-elected to a second term and he is barred from seeking a third, making the gesture less risky. Notably, too, Edwards offered few specifics about how aggressive a line he would take towards reducing emissions, and he praised Louisiana industry and stressed its centrality to the state and national economy.

The governor said his effort will include a new Climate Initiatives Task Force that will come up with “next steps” for the state to take.

“We are not announcing targets today, or metrics, and we are certainly not starting with a series of regulations,” he said.

Edwards also stressed that the carbon reduction efforts would be as industry-friendly as possible.

“Another truth we can’t ignore is that our state economy, and the nation at large, depends on Louisiana’s strong industrial sector,” he said. “We provide the energy and the petrochemical products the country runs on.”

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Those industries also produce a lot of greenhouse gases, and amid a building boom, the numbers have been going up. In January, the Environmental Integrity Project reported that facilities in three industry sectors in 2018 emitted 764 million tons of greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide and other compounds linked to global warming. That was 8% more than in 2016.

New oil and gas production and new and expanded existing industrial facilities could add another 227 million tons of greenhouse gases a year to the atmosphere in Louisiana by 2025, an increase of almost one-third, the group said.

And the increases here are occurring even as total greenhouse gases in the nation dropped by 2.1% last year, mostly due to a drop in coal usage at power plants.

Global warming is linked to rising sea levels, among other problems. Carbon dioxide reduces the ability of sunlight to escape the Earth's atmosphere. The ocean absorbs some of the heat, where it warms and expands water molecules. The heat also speeds the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers.

After Thursday's news conference, DEQ Secretary Chuck Carr Brown said the task force will determine the volume of greenhouse gases emitted by industry and other sources in the state, and then come up with ways to reduce them. He noted that existing federal regulations overseen by his department include permits governing carbon emissions.

Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Chairman Chip Kline said that by 2023, when the next update of the coastal Master Plan is published, it will include detailed information on the state’s emissions and its plans to reduce them.

Department of Natural Resources Secretary Thomas Harris, whose agency oversees oil and gas production, plus other wells used by industry to dispose of wastes, said his department has requested authorization from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to extend its regulatory authority to wells that can be used to inject carbon emissions deep underground.

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There’s an opportunity to get petrochemical facilities to move their carbon dioxide to those disposal wells, he said.

In what may be a sign that Edwards' greenhouse gas reduction proposal is not overly aggressive, the plan was welcomed by the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, which represents mid-size and large oil and gas companies.

“LMOGA is looking forward to the opportunity to work collaboratively with the Governor and his administration on his 2020 priorities, including efforts to continue reducing emissions and to protect our coast,” Tyler Gray, the group's president and general counsel, said in a news release. “The oil and natural gas industry is tackling our climate challenges head on, making significant investments in a cleaner future and making strides in reducing emissions to the lowest levels in a generation.”

LMOGA has established its own task force to promote carbon capture and underground storage technology similar to the ones mentioned by Harris, according to the news release. The release also pointed out that much of the revenue supporting the state's coastal Master Plan comes from taxes and fees from oil and gas production.

The greenhouse gas reduction initiative and other projects mentioned by Edwards also were praised by environmental groups that are members of the Restore the Mississippi River Delta coalition, which has been supporting the state's restoration efforts for more than a decade.

“The ambitious priorities outlined by Governor Edwards today can have a lasting positive impact on Louisiana for generations to come,” said Steve Cochran, a vice president with the Environmental Defense Fund and campaign director for Restore the Mississippi River Delta. “To protect the future of our state, we must do everything we can to limit the rate of sea level rise, we must adapt to changes that are already occurring along our coast, and we must think long term about our jobs. .... This is what progress looks like.”

“Louisiana is already a model for how to plan for climate adaptation and build coastal resilience,“ said Natalie Snider, senior director of coastal resilience at Environmental Defense Fund. “We now have the opportunity to become a model for how to reduce emissions in a state with a fossil-fuel-based economy.”

Edwards also announced that the state will put $115 million from an expected state surplus into the coastal trust fund, and that the state also will receive at least $120 million in federal offshore oil and gas revenue. All of that money will be directed towards coastal restoration and flood protection, he said.

The offshore money will help pay for levee and flood control improvements in the Lafitte area of Jefferson Parish; a part of the state’s share of the cost of the West Shore Lake Pontchartrain levee in St. Charles and St. John parishes; a levee at Jesuit Bend in Plaquemines Parish; and levee improvements in St. Mary Parish.

Edwards also announced that he is for the first time appointing a “chief resilience officer” to integrate information and decisions involving the state’s coastal Master Plan into the decision-making of all other state agencies.

Charles Sutcliffe, who has worked on coastal policy in the governor’s office since 2011, said he met with senior state agency officials last fall to begin that process.