On the Gulf Coast, where the ocean meets the industrial shoreline, a quiet revolution is taking shape. University of Houston researchers have identified this region—spanning Texas and Louisiana—as America's best location to deploy a new technology that harnesses seawater itself to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The technology, called electrochemical marine carbon dioxide removal (e-mCDR), works by treating seawater in a way that boosts the ocean's natural ability to absorb and store carbon dioxide. It's an elegant solution built on a simple fact: oceans already capture approximately 30% of all human-produced carbon dioxide emissions each year. By optimizing this process, scientists believe they can dramatically accelerate the planet's carbon removal capacity.
Professor Mim Rahimi of UH's Cullen College of Engineering led the study, published in Communications Sustainability, which asked a deceptively practical question: not whether this technology works, but where it should be deployed. Rahimi and his team, including Ph.D. researcher Abdelrahman Refaie, analyzed 38 coastal facilities across the United States—power plants, desalination facilities, and liquefied natural gas terminals—then grouped them into five regional hubs: Northeast, Southeast, South, West, and Northwest.
The South hub, which encompasses the Gulf Coast, emerged as the clear winner. The region's combination of affordable electricity, extensive industrial infrastructure, and robust hydrogen transportation and storage networks gave it decisive advantages. "The South hub has one of the highest diversity factors between power plants, desalination and LNG," Refaie explained. That diversity matters enormously for implementation—if one sector becomes unavailable, others can step in, reducing risk and ensuring the technology's resilience.
While the West and Northeast hubs also scored well, they excelled for different reasons. California's coastal facilities benefit from large seawater intake capacity and a cleaner energy mix, while the Northeast stands out for its raw carbon removal potential. But the Gulf Coast's combination of all three factors—affordable power, diverse industrial facilities, and hydrogen infrastructure—positioned it as the most logistically viable hub for scaling this technology.
Beyond the data, Rahimi sees an opportunity that extends well beyond carbon removal. Building and maintaining e-mCDR systems along the Gulf Coast could create jobs and boost coastal economies. More broadly, the research provides what Rahimi calls "a roadmap" for companies or government agencies ready to implement this technology at scale. In March, he visited members of Congress to advocate for ocean-based carbon removal, framing it as a chance for the United States to lead in both research and real-world deployment.
The timing is significant. As Rahimi noted in his congressional visit, "different offices recognize the need to reduce CO2 emissions, and there is growing awareness that the ocean could play an important role in that conversation." For the University of Houston, positioned right in the hub with the highest performance metrics, the pathway is clear: leverage the technology being developed in their labs and become part of the implementation that could reshape how America tackles climate change.
The ocean is already working to absorb our carbon. This research simply asks how we can help it do more.