It's been a while since we posted about the ethanol carbon capture pipeline. In the spirit of April 10's Ethanol carbon pipeline digest: trust & protest.
Writing for Reuters, Leah Douglass reports in Midwest carbon pipeline's backers have close ties to Iowa government:
Summit Carbon Solutions, the company behind a huge carbon pipeline proposal in the U.S. Midwest, has close ties to Iowa officials and regulators charged with approving a large part of its route, according to a Reuters review of public documents and company websites.
At least four members of Summit's leadership have direct links to the Iowa governor's office or the Iowa Utility Board (IUB), both of which could influence the future of the roughly 2,000-mile (3,200-km) pipeline, according to the review. One is the top individual donor to the current governor, Kim Reynolds. Another is a former Iowa governor, Terry Branstad, who nominated two of the IUB's three commissioners, including its chair.
The links between Summit's leadership and public officials in Iowa, which would host the largest share of Summit's proposed Midwest Carbon Express project, have raised worries among ethics watchdogs and environmental groups over whether project opponents will get a fair hearing.
"I would say there is a valid concern on the part of the (pipeline opponents) that they're not getting equal treatment by the government," said Robert Maguire, research director at the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who examined the Reuters reporting.
Ames, Iowa-based Summit said it was following legal and ethics guidelines and that it is typical for former officials and regulators to take private-sector roles in which their expertise is relevant.
"It's not surprising that the company has attracted a strong bipartisan team with a diverse set of experiences in agriculture, engineering and public policy," Summit spokesperson Jesse Harris said.
Summit's project is meant to capture millions of tons of carbon dioxide from 32 Midwest ethanol plants and pipe it to an underground storage site in North Dakota. Iowa, the top ethanol state, would host about 680 miles of the pipeline.
The project would help the biofuels industry secure a place in a climate-friendly future by reducing its carbon footprint, while also taking advantage of federal and state subsidies for carbon capture and low carbon fuels.
Landowners have expressed concern that the pipeline could reduce farm yields, lower property values or pose a public safety threat if it leaks.
POLITICAL DONATIONS
The Reuters review found that Bruce Rastetter, the head of Summit's parent company Summit Agricultural Group, is the top individual donor to Reynolds, Iowa's Republican governor. Rastetter gave nearly $150,000 to Reynolds between 2018 and 2022, according to records maintained by the National Institute on Money in Politics.
Opponents are concerned that Reynolds would veto any bills critical of the pipeline like one recently passed in the state House that would delay the project's permitting process.
Summit's senior policy advisor is Branstad, Iowa's Republican former governor and a former U.S. ambassador to China during President Donald Trump's administration. During Branstad's 22-year tenure as governor, he appointed two of the three IUB commissioners, including its chair. The IUB will decide whether to permit the project.
Summit's lobbyists in Iowa include Jake Ketzner, who is Reynolds' former chief of staff, and Jeffrey Boeyink, who served as Branstad's chief of staff.
IUB spokesperson Don Torney said the board members are held to ethics standards and would decide for themselves whether there was a conflict of interest in their participation in the pipeline proceedings "at the appropriate time."
Alex Murphy, spokesperson for Reynolds, said the governor conducts "a full, fair, and impartial review of every bill that makes it to her desk."
Rastetter's Summit Agricultural Group did not respond to a request for comment.
Jess Mazour, an organizer with the Sierra Club environmental group, said the relationships between Summit and Iowa officials made her worry that public opposition to the project could be ignored.
Some 98.9% of comments in the Summit pipeline docket at the IUB were opposed to the pipeline in March.
"If they are listening to the people, it's very clear that this shouldn't be approved," Mazour said. . . .
Read the rest at the West Centra Tribune. The Douglas article was published in the Star Tribune as Watchdogs troubled by ties to Iowa government by those behind carbon dioxide pipeline.
Reprinted in the Aberdeen American News, the Argus Leader's Nicole Ki reports in What will sway PUC's decision to permit SD's first CO2 pipeline? Here's what we know.:
South Dakota Public Utilities Commission has had more eyes on its three-member board in the last few months than seemingly anytime in the last decade.
Landowners, farmers, property owners and ethanol stakeholders have been keeping track of PUC, as PUC officials navigate "unchartered waters" with whether to permit, South Dakota's first carbon sequestration pipeline from Summit Carbon Solutions.
According to the Des Moines Register, Summit's pipeline is one of at least two major CO2 pipelines proposed for the Midwest, aside from Navigator CO2 Ventures.
And while about 370 landowners and farmers scrambled to register with PUC to intervene in Summit's proposed pipeline plans, PUC has been in the throws of data-gathering and bringing all appropriate, impacted parties to the table to kick off proceedings with Summit.
Currently, PUC has granted 340 parties intervenor status and is waiting on another 30 to hand in a complete application by April 28.
More:South Dakota projected to get $440M in labor income from Summit CO2 pipeline, study shows
PUC's role from now until February 2023 is singular: determining whether Summit's permit application meets all the criteria laid outlined in state statue, PUC chairperson Chris Nelson said. . . .
Read the rest at the Argus Leader or American News. There's also a study--presumably commissioned by the project itself, Ki reports in South Dakota projected to get $440M in labor income from Summit CO2 pipeline, study shows.
It's not just a perplexing regulatory question in South Dakota. At the Ottumwa Courier, Emily Hawk reports in Proposed carbon pipeline questioned by local residents, landowners:
A proposed carbon pipeline that would impact the area is being questioned by local residents and landowners.
On Friday, more than 20 local constituents gathered at The Book Vault to hear from Sylvia Spalding, landowner in Mahaska County; Carolyn Raffensperger, founder and executive director of Science & Environmental Health Network; and Jess Mazour, conservation program coordinator for the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club to have a public discussion about the proposed pipeline.
The group discussed how the proposed pipeline could impact the area, including the carbon capture and sequestration process, carbon pipeline safety, anticipated county costs and obligations and eminent domain.
“We [landowners] got to go to a meeting on Jan. 6, but we only got to hear the side of the story from the pipeline company,” Spalding says. “But there’s a wider story to tell, and we want to be able to tell that story. And we want to tell that story, not only to the landowners, but to other people in the county, because they’re going to be impacted too.”
Currently, three carbon pipeline projects are being proposed in Iowa by Summit Carbon Solutions, Wolf Carbon Solutions and Navigator CO2 Ventures. The pipeline that would impact The Courier area, named the Heartland Greenway Project, is being proposed by Texas-based Navigator CO2. As proposed, the project would cross 36 counties in Iowa, including Mahaska and Wapello.
The project is estimated to be a $3 billion investment and would bring in approximately $25 million in property tax revenue to the state, according to Navigator CO2. The project is now in the easement acquisition phase, and if passed, construction of the 1,300-mile pipeline is slated to begin in 2024.
The pipelines aim to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol and other kinds of agricultural plants before entering the atmosphere. The gas would then be liquefied by pressure and transported through pipelines where it is sequestered deep underground.
The pipeline’s purpose is to lower greenhouse gas emissions to keep ethanol production and other agricultural industries feasible. However, Raffensperger, an environmental lawyer, says the carbon pipelines are not a “climate solution.” She explains it requires more energy to capture CO2 than it would to run an ethanol plant. She also says there are no “real” or “adequate” regulations at the federal level because “the CO2 pipelines are such a new idea.”
“These are get-rich schemes for already rich people,” Raffensperger says. “They are not a climate solution.”
The project would be funded by public tax dollars, and private corporations like Navigator CO2 would receive the profits, including carbon credits from the federal government. Iowa counties will be responsible for hiring inspectors for the projects. The Mahaska County Board of Supervisors hired ISG during their Nov. 15, 2021 meeting.
“All the time your supervisors are spending talking to landowners on the phone, setting up meetings, meeting with the pipeline companies, that’s all money they’re pulling out of your county’s budget so that they can consider these pipelines,” Mazour says.
Constituents are also concerned about the pipeline’s safety and the impact it could have on local farmland and the environment if it were to leak. Raffensperger explained what happens to a person’s body when it encounters carbon dioxide, which is an asphyxiant. . . .
Learn more at the Courier.
At the Center Square, a project of the Franklin News Foundation, Mary Stroka reported on April 20 in Iowa OCA: Summit needs to provide IUB more evidence it’s avoiding asking for eminent domain:
The Iowa Office of Consumer Advocate asked the Iowa Utilities Board Tuesday to require Summit Carbon Solutions to file documentation before IUB sets a procedural schedule.
OCA Consumer Advocate Jennifer Easler directed the utility board to require Summit show it’s tried to minimize the pipeline’s pathway through Iowa before asking for eminent domain action.
The IUB asked Summit March 23 to provide several documents pertinent to its construction of 681 miles of pipeline in Iowa for transporting carbon dioxide. Summit said April 13 in an introduction to its responses that since many IUB staff questions relate to matters in progress, some details are still unknown, including specific construction plans and permits “typically sought and obtained closer to the beginning of construction” when the final route and specific construction practices are established.
“Summit Carbon believes that, as has been the case in other cases before the Board, such details are likely better addressed at the time of, and within, written testimony,” it said.
OCA Consumer Advocate Jennifer Easler told the IUB in the April 19 letter that it sounds like Summit needs to do more planning before proceedings begin since carbon dioxide pipelines are still a novelty for Iowa.
“Summit should be required to file information showing that it has thoroughly researched and planned the proposed project before the Board and other parties invest time and resources to evaluating that project,” Easler said.
To receive 45Q federal tax credits, Summit needs to begin construction on the pipeline before January 2026.
SF 2160 and an amendment on HF 2565 were introduced to stop eminent domain for the pipelines, but as of Tuesday, the typical last day of the legislative session, the bills have not been passed. Iowa legislators have not yet passed a budget, which they must do before they end the legislative session, Iowa Public Radio reported.
More than 1,700 constituents contacted state legislators calling for an end to eminent domain for private gain, a Food and Water Watch news release said. Their March 2022 poll with Change Research of 950 registered Iowa voters found that 80% of registered Iowa voters oppose allowing private corporations to use eminent domain to build the carbon pipelines.
Iowa Utilities Board Director of Communications Don Tormey told The Center Square in an emailed statement April 1 that county boards of supervisors along the pipeline route hire inspectors to evaluate for land restoration standards after they receive notice from pipeline companies of the intent to build the pipeline. Under Iowa Code § 479B.20(2) and 199-IAC-chapter 9, pipeline companies must pay inspection costs for Iowa land restoration standards.
The U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is responsible for safety inspection of pipelines, Tormey said.
Summit Carbon Solutions has gained 20% of its projected pipeline route through Iowa, Reuters reported Tuesday. .
At the American Prospect, Aden Choate reports in Fight Erupts in Iowa Over Carbon Capture Pipelines:
Last week, President Biden visited an ethanol plant in central Iowa where he hailed increased infrastructure investment, particularly in biofuels like ethanol, as essential to a net-zero carbon future. But he didn’t acknowledge the environmental downsides of the projects that companies want to build to pursue those goals. Biden’s trip came on the heels of a late-March “people’s public hearing” at the Iowa State Capitol, where dozens spoke out against three carbon capture pipeline projects proposed for the Midwest. Deborah Main was with them. She and her husband live on the 195-acre Woodbury County, Iowa farm, northeast of Sioux City, where she was raised. It has been in their family for more than 100 years, and Iowa recognizes it as a “Century Farm.”
Last August, Summit Carbon Solutions, an offshoot of the Alden, Iowa–based Summit Agricultural Group, also contacted Main’s 96-year-old parents who live in nearby Plymouth County, about a new carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project, the Midwest Carbon Express Pipeline. The proposed path would cut through the entire east side of Main’s family farm, which now serves as grazing land for a cattle herd and cradles a pond fed by a watershed that extends through several northeastern Iowa counties.
In the months that followed, Main learned that her family’s land, along with the holdings of Indigenous communities and hundreds of landowners across the state, has become a flashpoint in a bigger battle—one that is reminiscent of the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Only this time around, CCS companies and their political allies have adopted the language of climate change mitigation to quell fears about the project as they undermine land rights and dismiss concerns about local climate changes. In response to these multipronged threats, the Midwest anti-pipeline movement has reached a fever pitch, uniting environmentalists, Indigenous communities, and local residents across the political spectrum.
Backed by investors like John Deere and shale oil baron Harold Hamm, the Midwest Carbon Express is a 2,000-mile, $4.5 billion pipeline that would pressurize and transport about 12 million tons of carbon dioxide siphoned from corn ethanol processing annually. It would link at least 31 ethanol plants in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and South Dakota to a terminus in North Dakota, where liquefied carbon dioxide would be injected into a porous rock geologic basin more than a mile underground for permanent storage. The project, if built, would be the largest CCS pipeline in the world and generate significant tax credits for the company and its ethanol manufacturing partners.
Summit representatives have presented the Midwest Carbon Express as an essential step to preserve and “decarbonize” ethanol production in Iowa, which accounts for a quarter of total U.S. production. But environmental advocates and climate scientists warn that CCS technology is not a one-size-fits-all climate change solution. CCS can be utilized to boost oil production through a specialized process, while pipeline construction, operation, and maintenance also produce carbon emissions.
The Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) regulates public-utility infrastructure and permits new projects, and prohibits private companies from directly contacting landowners until a project proposal has been announced at a public information meeting. But follow-up community meetings hosted by Summit Carbon were often announced at the last minute and held at the peak of harvest season.
Moreover, the initial Midwest Carbon Express meetings did not occur until mid-September last year, weeks after Summit Carbon approached Main’s parents and returned to the property a second time to request to survey their land. Agreeing to a survey does not equal interest in granting an easement to the company, but Main’s family views Summit’s entitled attitudes about access to their property as unacceptable.
For nearly six months, Summit Carbon has pursued easements with Iowa landowners. Easements can be voluntarily obtained if landowners agree and receive fair-market compensation. Or they can be acquired by eminent domain, utilizing “public use” designations to override landowners’ property rights; landowners receive compensation but lose their property.
Eminent domain rests on the exclusive power of state or federal government entities, but they have also ceded these powers to private companies. The IUB allowed Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of Phillips 66 and Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, to exercise eminent domain powers for DAPL: About 15 percent of the 1,295 tracts of Iowa land used for the DAPL were forcibly taken.
Once a private company obtains an easement, it has the right to dig, install, and maintain the pipeline, and enter the property at will. Some landowners have voluntarily ceded land rights for compensation, but many more have joined forces with environmental activists to resist pressure from Summit representatives. There was some initial resistance to working with “tree-hugging” groups like the Sierra Club and Food & Water Watch, but residents turned to their local chapters for help when many state and local officials—both Democratic and Republican—ignored them.
Emma Schmit, a senior organizer for the Iowa chapter of Food & Water Watch, saw the lack of a united landowner strategy as one of the failings of DAPL resistance in Iowa. That’s not the case this time around. There are weekly community meetings, Facebook groups, and email chains with organizing tactics and upcoming events, which connect landowners and tribes to legal representation and guidance. Taking lessons from what they faced before, folks are prepared to fight back. “We’ve been able to bridge divides on every level—Democrats and Republicans, rural and urban, young and old,” says Schmit.
Summit Carbon boasts about its tribal outreach and community engagement on its website, but the individuals involved in those consultations and “cultural surveys” report that Summit representatives have shown little respect for or understanding of Indigenous people. “So far, we just really don’t see that on the ground,” says Mahmud Fitil, Frontlines Action and Logistics coordinator for the Great Plains Action Society, a coalition of regional Indigenous organizers.
During a video call earlier this year, Summit Carbon displayed a map of the proposed pipeline route that demarcated federally recognized tribal reservations. But when Fitil asked them to identify the lands of the Winnebago tribe of Nebraska, representatives could not, even though the pipeline is slated to run just north of the reservation. Queries related to training for tribal first responders in the case of a pipeline-related accident have also gone unanswered. This “forked-tongue speaking,” as Donnielle Wanatee, a Meskwaki Nation member and a grassroots DAPL resistance leader, put it in a “Prairie Not Pipelines” December webinar, seems to characterize much of Summit Carbon’s approach.
A February 2020 carbon pipeline rupture in Satartia, Mississippi, also demonstrated the health risks of these pipelines, particularly for frontline tribal nations and communities of color. First responders reported that some of the people they rescued acted “like zombies” and required hospitalization. Concentrated carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide gases cause this disorientation, and as exposure times increase, severe effects include unconsciousness, coma, and death by asphyxiation.
The IUB has yet to permit Summit Carbon’s proposal, which was submitted in January. In past statements, the IUB has insisted that eminent domain is not an automatic right, yet it remains unclear how the IUB would decide when and where eminent domain should be granted. Iowa regulations state that the IUB can grant the right of eminent domain to pipeline companies if it is “found to be suitable and in the public interest.” In a statement provided to the Prospect, IUB spokesman Don Tormey said that the board reviews evidence in favor of or opposing the proposed pipeline and uses Supreme Court, state court, and agency precedents to make these determinations on a parcel-by-parcel basis, but did not provide any specific examples.
Brian Jorde, a trial attorney with the Nebraska-based Domina Law Group who has represented landowners against eminent domain abuses, and is working on the multistate legal strategy, claims that there is no public-use aspect to CCS projects like the Midwest Carbon Express. “Politics should have no bearing on the law and decisions made by commissioners, board members, and agencies,” Jorde says.
All three current IUB board members were appointed by either Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds (Bruce Rastetter, the Summit Agricultural Group CEO, has donated to her campaigns) or former Gov. Terry Branstad (a senior policy adviser at Summit Carbon since March 2021 and President Trump’s ambassador to China). Reynolds issued an executive order last year creating a carbon sequestration task force that includes various agricultural investors, energy company CEOs, and IUB chair Geri Huser, among others. It does not include representatives from any leading environmental organizations in Iowa, and Reynolds has repeatedly put off meeting requests from constituents opposed to CCS projects. Reynolds’s office did not respond to a request from the Prospect to discuss the task force.
In late March, the Iowa House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that included an amendment that would prevent the IUB from holding eminent domain hearings for carbon capture projects until February 1, 2023. But the legislation remained stalled in the Senate, and the 2022 Iowa legislative session concluded this week without further action.
Deborah Main and her parents never considered signing a voluntary easement, but they fear that the IUB will allow Summit Carbon to take their land by eminent domain in order to secure a right-of-way for the Midwest Carbon Express. “If this pipeline gets approved, it’s going to release a whole Pandora’s box of carbon sequestration pipelines,” says Main.
We'll keep an eye out for more coverage.
Related posts:
- Ethanol carbon pipeline digest: trust & protest
- South Dakotans, Iowans don't hug CO2 pipeline
- Keloland: mostly negative public comments to SD Public Utilities Commission on CO2 pipeline
- Strib: Ethanol's per-gallon carbon output shrinks, but greenhouse gas from plants remains high
- We agree: It's time to move on from ethanol
- Another IA newspaper editorial board questions ethanol industry, carbon capture pipelines
- Ethanol CCS pipeline update: Reuters & Agweek
- Not a lot of easements for Midwest carbon pipeline, but plenty of political connections
- 2 ethanol CO2 headlines that make us go hmmm
- CO2 pipelines: who wins & who loses?
- Coming soon from a cornfield near you: mammoth carbon capture pipeline system
- Mother Jones: USDA Secretary Vilsack’s son works for a controversial ethanol pipeline project
- Iowa county boards scorn construction of CO2 pipelines, use of eminent domain to build them
- Digest of news about carbon dioxide pipelines
Screengrab: The proposed Summit CO2 pipeline, which could capture CO2 from ethanol plants, such Granite Falls Energy LLC in Granite Falls, Minnesota, which would help reduce the ethanol plants' overall carbon footprint. West Central Tribune, via Summit CO2 project.
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