New pipelines are usually controversial, with their disruption of land and potential harm to creeks and underground water supplies. The proposed Midwest Carbon Express, a pipeline proposed by Iowa-based Carbon Summit Solutions to carry carbon dioxide (CO2), is no exception.
The line would run 2,000 miles through Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota, capturing CO2 from 57 ethanol plants to deposit in a deep rock formation in central North Dakota. Pipelines typically range from four inches to thirty inches in diameter, and Summit is requesting a route width of 500 feet for most of the project. Following construction and restoration, the permanent right-of-way would be 25 to 50 feet wide.
Carbon dioxide is a major contributor to climate change, and the waste gases from ethanol plants are mostly CO2. The plan is to capture the gas from waste flues and “scrub” it with chemicals called amines to purify it. Then it would be pressurized into liquid form and a pipeline would carry it to a suitable rock formation for “permanent” storage. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules require the formation to be at least a half mile underground, porous, and with a layer of shale or other dense rock above it, to keep it from seeping to the surface.
Summit says it has agreements with landowners along nearly 75 percent of its proposed route, but it is having less success getting approval from state and local governments.
But so far, the company is not going away, unlike Navigator CO2 Ventures, a Texas-based company that cancelled plans in October 2023 for its Heartland Greenway line, which would have carried carbon from ethanol plants to an underground storage location in Illinois.
Not only does Summit’s project promise more than 11,000 construction jobs and more than 1,000 operational jobs; it asserts that capturing the CO2 will benefit participating ethanol plants, as fuel produced by these plants will be designated a net-zero fuel by 2030, enabling them to claim higher prices in a carbon-constrained world. It promises to strengthen the ag economy by maintaining high demand for corn; and it would “permanently store up to 18 million tons of CO2 every year,” the equivalent of removing nearly 4 million cars from the road, according to the company’s website.
Sounds great, right? Then why are several environmental groups fighting it? For a surprising number of reasons.
To start with, “We have no familiarity with CO2 pipelines,” worries Sarah Mooradian, Government Relations and Policy Director with the group CURE, based in Montevideo, Minnesota. “Is the state ready for the permitting process?” On the most basic level, the construction process is disruptive, and scientists don’t know how long it takes for soils and water systems to recover. An Iowa study found construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline caused “severe subsoil compaction, impaired soil physical structure that can discourage root growth and reduce water infiltration in the right-of-way,” as well as changes in available ground water and nutrients. Five years later, the researchers report that “the compaction and (crop) yields are very slowly starting to recover.”
Mooradian also has safety concerns. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) regulates CO2 pipeline safety. A rupture in 2020 of a CO2 pipeline owned by Denbury, Inc. near Satartia, MS, required evacuation of about 300 residents and hospitalization of 45 people.
Flowing in the pipe, the CO2 was in liquid form, but Mississippi emergency officials said the rupture reduced the pressure and it turned into a gas, which hung low to the ground, depriving bystanders of oxygen and stalling cars. Reportedly, Denbury did not notify local officials.
In early April 2024, a Denbury CO2 pipeline rupture near Sulphur, Louisiana prompted a shelter-in-place order; no injuries were immediately reported.
CO2 can take different forms, like gas, liquid and dry ice. But while CO2 in its “supercritical” liquid state is regulated by the federal government, the gaseous state and other states aren’t currently regulated at all.
As a result of the Mississippi rupture, PHMSA is updating its CO2 pipeline safety standards. The agency plans to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in June 2024, but has not set a date for a final rule.
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) cites further safety concerns regarding underground storage of CO2: potential leakage, contamination of drinking water, and stimulation of seismic activity. There also are questions about the permanence of “permanent” storage. For example, CIEL says current US federal regulations only require storage of CO2 for 50 years to qualify for subsidies.
Broader concerns
This brings us to the more philosophical objections to the idea of capturing and storing carbon dioxide. The predominant use of carbon capture so far is to inject it into depleted oil fields to produce more oil, called “enhanced oil recovery” (EOR). This is true particularly in the United States, where the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that four out of six barrels of oil discovered in the country are unrecoverable without EOR or other unconventional methods. Summit’s map of its project footprint shows the line ending close to North Dakota’s oil fields, and in recent statements, company officials acknowledge that this could be the ultimate destination of their CO2.
Sara Wolf, Strategic Policy Director at Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light (MN IPL) says, “It needs to be acknowledged that it is very likely that carbon dioxide pollution will end up pushing out more oil, and Minnesota has no control over that.” (disclosure: I sit on a policy committee for this group in northern Minnesota)
In fact, North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms said in August that more carbon dioxide will be needed in order to sustain oil production for the long term. “We’ve got to find a way for carbon capture and utilization to become a part of North Dakota’s economy or we will leave billions of barrels of oil in the ground,” said Helms.
Federal tax laws now favor CO2 sequestration over use in oil recovery. Currently the tax credit for carbon capture—often referred to by its spot in the tax code, section 45Q—provides for a credit of $85 per metric ton of CO2 that is geologically sequestered and $60 per metric ton used for EOR.
Some observers predict that this taxpayer-funded investment, along with others included in other recent legislation, could boost the CO2 captured to 450 million metric tons by 2035. (Currently, the U.S. emits about six billion metric tons annually.) The overall cost of these subsidies to the U.S. Treasury could rise to from $30 billion to well over $100 billion over the next ten years.
“It’s disturbing to me that we would spend time and money on something that won’t get us to zero emissions,” says Sara Wolf. “The 2018 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report told us we can’t just achieve 80 percent reduction from 2005 levels; we have to reach zero. The liquid fuels being proposed won’t get us there. We need to pivot to another system that can get us there.”
Namely, electrification.
One of the elephants in the room where this discussion is taking place is that carbon capture is an energy-intensive process. At best it captures only part of the emissions of an ethanol plant or any other industrial facility; it doesn’t address other pollutants such as particulate matter, and if fossil fuels power the capture process, even more emissions are generated. The process also requires a lot of water.
Meanwhile, advocates point out that the costs of less-polluting energy sources such as solar and wind have plummeted. They worry that investing in carbon capture will lock current technologies in place and divert resources from truly clean energy.
How did we get here?
The idea of investing millions of dollars to capture and store carbon dioxide calls forth the absurd images created by Rube Goldberg, the American artist who made fun of our devotion to technology by designing ways to accomplish things by extremely roundabout means, which could be done much more simply. A short history of ethanol itself elaborates the same message.
Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Liveable Future reminds us that demand for ethanol was intentionally created in the early 1970s when Archer-Daniels-Midland (now ADM) and other agribusiness giants found their manufacture of high fructose corn syrup was producing ethanol as a by-product. They created lobbying organizations and donated lavishly to politicians, which produced the numerous subsidies and tax breaks ethanol has enjoyed over the years. Tax credits, subsidies, insured loans, price guarantees, and federal government purchase commitments boosted demand. The phaseout of lead in gasoline led to the use of ethanol as an octane booster. In 2005 the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) required a minimum volume of “renewable fuel” (mostly defined as ethanol) to be produced. That minimum was raised over the years to 15 billion gallons, mostly added to gasoline in a ten percent blend. Ironically, Americans don’t consume enough gasoline to use that much ethanol, and the U.S. exports roughly a billion gallons of ethanol yearly. Now, nearly half the corn produced in the country is turned into ethanol. The artificial demand resulted in increased corn prices, which has led to food shortages and increased food prices, as well as conversion of much farmland to corn production, and ever-growing nitrogen-fed hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, researchers have been trying for years to nail down the environmental costs and benefits of ethanol vs. gasoline. Competing studies use different data, making it difficult for people to understand.
Last winter the advocacy group Clean Wisconsin released a report comparing the energy produced by solar farms vs. ethanol acreage. Its key finding is that a solar farm can produce 100 times the energy of a comparably sized field planted with corn for ethanol, after all energy inputs are included. Those inputs include the cost of building and installing solar panels, and growing, harvesting, transportation and processing costs for ethanol.
Where the project stands
Summit’s Midwest Carbon Express would run through five states. So far, two (North and South Dakota) have denied permits, though the company is resubmitting applications. The Iowa Utilities Board held hearings last year and a decision is expected this spring. Landowners there are pushing the legislature to strengthen citizen rights over eminent domain laws. Summit is suing several counties in Iowa over their ordinances restricting pipelines’ proximity to cities, nursing homes, medical facilities, schools, and public parks.
Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) required an Environmental Impact Statement and held hearings last fall on Summit’s plan for 28 miles of pipeline in Minnesota, from an ethanol plant near Fergus Falls to just south of Breckenridge on the South Dakota border. The Department of Commerce produced a Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
Summit made its preliminary application in September of 2022. Documents are available on the PUC eDockets website.
The PUC has not set a date for the next step in the process. This application represents just a small part of the planned route; the southern section runs through Chippewa, Cottonwood, Jackson, Kandiyohi, Martin, Redwood, Renville, and Yellow Medicine counties, for a total of 241 miles, but is not included in the current application.
Summit declined to comment for this story.
Summit Carbon Solutions is an offshoot of Summit Agricultural Group, run by Bruce Ratstetter, a politically connected entrepreneur who regularly gives six-figure donations to Republican political candidates. Former Iowa Gov Terry Branstad is a Senior Policy Advisor to Summit Carbon Solutions; he appointed Ratstetter to the Iowa Board of Regents, where the latter served four years as president. In mid-January 2024, Ratstetter endorsed former President Trump for re-election.
Meanwhile, another pipeline company, Kansas-based TallgrassEnergy, has reached a groundbreaking “Community Benefits Agreement” with Bold Nebraska, a citizen group that protested both the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline. Tallgrass plans to convert an existing natural gas pipeline to carry CO2. Bold Nebraska corralled 11 prominent statewide groups to support the project, while Tallgrass commits to significant investments in training of first responders, donations to communities the line passes through, and better payment terms for landowners. Bold Nebraska isn’t offering the same deal to Summit, which it describes as a company that “does not care about landowners, first responders or communities in the path of their new pipeline infrastructure project.”
