According to the Legislative Budget Board (LBB), HB 2790 is not expected to have a significant fiscal implication to the State. The fiscal note assumes that any costs associated with implementing the bill could be absorbed using existing resources.

The fiscal note does not identify any new state revenue, state savings, appropriation, dedicated account, staffing requirement, or major implementation cost. The Office of Court Administration and Texas Judicial Council are listed as source agencies, which indicates the bill’s fiscal review focused primarily on potential effects on the court system from changes to civil liability rules.

For local governments, LBB likewise anticipates no significant fiscal implication. The fiscal note does not describe any recurring local cost, one-time implementation expense, or assumption-dependent local impact.

Texas Policy Research recommends that lawmakers vote NO on HB 2790 because it creates an industry-specific liability shield for carbon capture, utilization, and storage activities at the expense of ordinary property, nuisance, trespass, and damages remedies. The bill is intended to provide a predictable legal framework for CCUS operators, facilities, and producers, while allowing some damages for interference with water or mineral access. But the mechanism it uses is a statutory narrowing of claims and damages available to land and mineral owners affected by carbon dioxide capture, transportation, injection, migration, storage, or release.

The bill does not appear to grow the size or administrative scope of government in the conventional sense. The bill analysis states that it does not expressly grant additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution. It also does not create a new agency, office, board, fund, grant program, permitting regime, or enforcement bureaucracy. However, it does expand the substantive scope of state intervention in private civil law by using statute to alter the ordinary balance between operators and affected land or mineral owners. That is a government action even if it does not require new personnel or appropriations.

The bill also does not materially increase the burden on taxpayers. According to the LBB, no significant fiscal implication to the State is anticipated, and any costs associated with the bill are assumed to be absorbable within existing resources. The LBB also anticipates no significant fiscal implication to units of local government. This means the primary objection is not direct taxpayer cost. The concern is instead that limiting private remedies can shift risk away from operators and onto property owners, and potentially create pressure for future public intervention if harms occur but private recovery is constrained.

The bill does not increase the regulatory burden on businesses generally. To the contrary, it reduces litigation exposure for a specific class of businesses: carbon dioxide producers, storage facility owners or operators, and transporters. The bill analysis explains that it bars certain nuisance-based claims and limits recovery of noneconomic and exemplary damages in covered civil actions. That reduction in liability exposure may benefit CCUS operators, but it does not represent broad deregulation. It is a targeted legal preference for one industry, rather than a neutral reduction of regulatory burdens across the economy.

For individuals, especially landowners and mineral owners, the bill can increase the practical burden of protecting property rights. A claimant could not bring an action on the basis that captured or stored carbon dioxide, or a process associated with capturing or storing it, is a pollutant, a nuisance, or a cause of nuisance-related injury. The bill also restricts noneconomic damages in cases involving injection, migration, seismic activity, subsurface trespass or conversion, inadvertent release, environmental damage, and interference with possessory or ownership rights. This makes it harder for affected property owners to obtain full remedies through ordinary civil litigation.

The private property concern is the central reason for the No recommendation. The bill limits recovery for claims that a geologic storage facility prevented or impeded access to underground minerals or water, or interfered with production of those resources. It also provides that a claimant who received compensation through a lease payment, royalty payment, easement purchase, or similar consideration for the possibility of such interference is not entitled to recover damages if the interference later occurs. That structure may improve certainty for operators, but it risks weakening the bargaining position and legal remedies of property owners whose land, minerals, water, or subsurface interests are affected.

We should distinguish between removing unnecessary regulation and shielding private actors from accountability. HB 2790 does not simply repeal burdensome rules. It changes civil liability standards to protect a defined industry from certain claims and damages. Free enterprise is best served by neutral rules of property, contract, and tort law, not by sector-specific liability limits that reduce the cost of risk for one class of operators.

For these reasons, the bill should be opposed. It does not significantly increase taxpayer burden or create new bureaucracy, and it may reduce litigation risk for CCUS businesses. But those benefits are outweighed by the bill’s effect on private property rights, common-law remedies, and equal treatment under civil liability rules. The appropriate position is Vote No because the bill advances legal certainty for one industry by narrowing remedies available to affected land and mineral owners.