Two articles published in the South Dakota Searchlight late Friday address questions critics have raised about ethanol carbon pipelines and the ethanol industry itself.
I'm republishing them both here in one post.
Critics allege CO2 pipelines ‘farm the government’ for climate money while helping oil industry
By Joshia HaiarPlans to capture carbon dioxide emitted by ethanol plants, ship it via pipelines and store it underground are viewed by some as a way to fight climate change.
The process is one way to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, where it acts as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas.
But critics say the process known as carbon capture and sequestration could also aid oil production.
In a process called enhanced oil recovery, CO2 can be injected into aging oil wells to make it less thick, help it flow better, and cause the oil to expand toward wells.
Silvia Secchi, an environmental impacts researcher and professor at the University of Iowa, said oil extraction runs contrary to the goals of carbon sequestration, and to the goals of federal tax credits for sequestration projects. Those credits — up to $85 per metric ton of annual sequestered carbon — are supposed to motivate companies to help mitigate climate change.
“These people farm the government,” Secchi said. “They don’t care about climate change.”
That’s a belief shared by the lawyer representing over 1,000 landowners in four states who are opposed to carbon pipeline projects using eminent domain – the power to access private property for public use, provided the owner is given just compensation.
“Their climate change mask is being removed,” said the Omaha-based lawyer, Brian Jorde. “Do you honestly believe the majority of that CO2 will not be used for enhanced oil recovery? This is all the biggest joke on the taxpayer.”
Both of the multi-state carbon pipeline proposals that include South Dakota have had their permit applications rejected by state regulators, due in part to landowner opposition. One company, Navigator C02, has since withdrawn its proposal. The other company, Summit Carbon Solutions, plans to adjust its route and reapply.
Summit plans and possibilities
Summit’s pipeline could permanently store up to 18 million tons of carbon dioxide annually; at $85 per ton, that would equal $1.5 billion per year from the sequestration tax credit. The pipeline would capture carbon dioxide emitted from more than 30 ethanol plants in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska and transport it for sequestration in North Dakota.
In August, North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources said more CO2 will be needed to sustain oil production in the state for the long term.
However, Summit says its project will not be used for enhanced oil recovery.
“The permits we have filed, which specifies exactly what we are requesting from regulators, note clearly that our project is about the permanent sequestration of CO2,” the company’s website reads. “Additionally, Summit Carbon Solutions’ sequestration site outside of Bismarck, North Dakota, is entirely separate and apart from the Bakken or other areas where enhanced oil recovery is possible.”
Yet project maps show the sequestration area is near the oilfields of western North Dakota.
During a September permit hearing in Iowa, Jimmy Powell, Summit’s chief operations officer, left open the possibility that CO2 transported in the pipeline to North Dakota could be used to extract oil in the future.
“If another carrier decided to use, or ask us to transport CO2 for another purpose, like enhanced oil recovery, then that’s a possibility,” Powell said.
Powell also said the project is “maintaining 10% of the capacity of the pipeline for other shippers.” He said that’s something the project is doing as a “common carrier.”
A common carrier, as defined by federal law, is to be available for hire, at a rate deemed reasonable, by any company that needs to move commodities the pipeline ships. Additionally, the pipeline is to provide service on a non-discriminatory basis.
Being defined as a common carrier is an important designation because it is required for the project to use eminent domain, which Summit needs to complete the project. The company filed eminent domain actions against dozens of landowners earlier this year but withdrew them, at least temporarily, after the company’s permit application was denied. The company says it has voluntary access agreements called easements with nearly 75% of the project’s affected landowners.
Summit is a member of the Renewable Fuels Association. In response to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2020 call for input on increasing agricultural production, the association submitted a letter that addressed ways the renewable fuels industry works to reduce carbon emissions, including carbon capture and sequestration.
“These technologies include using the carbon dioxide emissions to extract other forms of energy from the ground, such as through enhanced oil recovery,” the letter said. It continued, “only a handful of plants are capable of supplying carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery efforts given their location with respect to EOR [enhanced oil recovery] activity.”
Summit’s ties to the oil industry include a $250 million project commitment last year from Continental Resources, a petroleum and natural gas exploration and production company.
Jason Hill, a bioenergy professor and researcher at the University of Minnesota, said people should understand that while ethanol producers once had to fight to get their product sold at gas stations against the interests of the oil industry, things have changed since electric vehicles hit the market.
“Petroleum and ethanol now have the same interest, and it’s liquid fuels,” Hill said.
A bridge to electric, or to ethanol
Silvia Secchi said biofuels producers once branded themselves as “a bridge to electric vehicles,” but behind the scenes, the industry has been lobbying to ensure a future for liquid fuels, “making that bridge as long as possible.”
Hill said the destination of the “bridge” has also changed: “What ethanol is, is a bridge to more ethanol.”
Poet, a Sioux Falls-based ethanol producer, said liquid fuels and internal combustion engines will be necessary for the foreseeable future.
“There’s a multitude of opinions around the growth of electric vehicles, but over time the world will need more low-carbon biofuels for sustainable aviation fuel, heavy trucking and other hard-to-decarbonize transportation sectors,” Poet said in a written statement.
Poet was a partner in the Navigator CO2 pipeline project.
During the regulatory hearing in South Dakota on the Navigator proposal, lawyers for that company brought in Michael Harrison, vice president of commercial operations for Valero Renewable Fuels Company. That’s a biofuel subdivision of Valero, a company that operates 15 oil refineries and describes itself as the world’s largest independent refiner.
Harrison explained that electric vehicles are “a much bigger threat than ethanol to us.”
He added that “California is hostile to all liquid fuels.” California, the country’s largest auto market, has approved a plan to phase out new gas cars by 2035. Additionally, the Biden administration has a goal of all newly manufactured light-duty vehicles being electric by 2027 and all vehicles by 2035. And General Motors announced it would phase out gas-powered vehicles by 2035.
Harrison said liquid fuel producers can use carbon capture and sequestration to lower the carbon emissions score of biofuel-blended gas, so it can be sold in places with strict emissions standards – keeping liquid fuels in those markets longer.
“That’s why it’s necessary for us to get the sequestration done, so we can compete on the world market,” he said.
Securing a future for ethanol
Sabrina Zenor, a spokeswoman for Summit, told South Dakota Searchlight during the company’s September hearing with state regulators – which failed to result in a permit – that ethanol could make up for lost demand from electric vehicles with bio-aviation fuel, which could be produced at a proposed Gevo plant in Lake Preston.
The Gevo plant, if constructed, would buy ethanol from regional ethanol plants and use that to create bio-aviation fuel, giving ethanol another market, she explained.
Gevo recently issued a press release saying that without a carbon sequestration pipeline in South Dakota, the company may seek opportunities in states that are more open to those projects.
“Let me be clear, Gevo does not want to leave South Dakota. We have a strong commitment to the state, our investments in Lake Preston, and to the local producers. We are just here to state the facts,” said CEO Patrick Gruber in the release.
The release went on to say carbon sequestration would boost demand for corn, create new jobs, help ensure a future for ethanol, and turn the Midwest into America’s hub for bio-aviation fuel.
During Summit’s September permit hearing, Zenor told South Dakota Searchlight the project is less about climate change and more about supporting the ethanol industry – a view that was echoed by Summit’s Jimmy Powell during the Iowa hearing.
“The purpose is to help the ethanol plant partners that we have contracted with, to capture their CO2 before it is emitted, transport it to North Dakota and sequester it subsurface, which will allow them to significantly reduce their carbon intensity, which will then give them access to low carbon fuel markets,” Powell said. “Hopefully sustain the livelihood of their businesses and the demand for corn.”
And there's this:
New bills raise debate over ethanol’s environmental impact, with implications for the climate
by Joshua HaiarSouth Dakota’s congressional delegation wants the federal government to measure the environmental impact of biofuels in a way that some researchers say is unlikely to help mitigate climate change.
Sen. John Thune and Rep. Dusty Johnson, both Republicans, recently reintroduced similar bipartisan bills in the Senate and House, with Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, cosponsoring the Senate legislation. The bills would require the Environmental Protection Agency to prioritize a particular model for assessing the environmental impact of biofuels.
“We should be using the best science available and that’s exactly what this bill does,” Johnson said in a press release.
The delegation wants the EPA to make the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation model — or GREET — the primary model for determining biofuel’s impact on the climate. That information would then be used by the EPA to help determine the volume of biofuels mandated to be mixed into the nation’s fuel supply, which is called the renewable fuel standard.
The model was developed by Argonne National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy and is already one of the models used to help inform the EPA’s renewable fuel standard.
The bill’s supporters say biofuels are good for the environment.
“It’s past time for the EPA to update its greenhouse gas modeling for all biofuels, which would more accurately reflect the emissions reductions achieved by ethanol, biodiesel, and sustainable aviation fuel,” Thune said in a press release.
Biofuels industry leaders also support prioritizing the GREET model.
“It is a well-established and well-understood model that is regularly updated through a consensus, peer-reviewed approach,” said a statement from Erin Branick, of South Dakota-based Poet, the world’s largest biofuel producer. “The model is based solely on nonpartisan scientific analysis.”
The legislation is also supported by Gevo (a would-be South Dakota bio-aviation fuel producer), the National Corn Growers Association, the American Coalition for Ethanol, the Renewable Fuels Association and the National Oilseed Processors Association.
Other models
Meanwhile, Jason Hill, a bioenergy professor and researcher at the University of Minnesota, emphasized the need to use multiple models, “which is what the EPA is currently doing,” rather than relying primarily on the GREET model.
“That model doesn’t account for things like the economic repercussions of certain policies,” he said. “For example, how more fuel production lowers fuel prices, and people then use more fuel.”
The bills say that within 90 days of their passage, and then every five years, the EPA would be required to adopt the latest version of the GREET model.
The agency currently relies on several models to gauge the impacts of biofuels to determine the renewable fuel standard. Models include FASOM, which simulates biofuel policy impacts on agriculture; CARD, which examines biofuel policies’ effects on agricultural markets; the EPA’s MOVES model, which predicts emissions from mobile sources; and other land-use models that help evaluate biofuel production’s impact on land changes.
Silvia Secchi, an environmental impacts researcher and professor at the University of Iowa, said the GREET model overlooks the climate implications of crop production, particularly concerning land-use changes like converting grasslands to cropland to produce more corn and soybeans for biofuels.
Branick, of Poet, pushed back on that assertion.
“Land use change is often overestimated by some with an agenda,” Branick said. “The total acreage of land devoted to corn agriculture has remained unchanged for nearly a century, and to claim that bioethanol production increases land-use change is simply disconnected from reality.”
Statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show corn acreage has risen steadily since the 1990s, from roughly 70 million acres to more than 90 million acres nationally, and from about 3 million acres to more than 6 million acres in South Dakota. Corn is the most widely grown crop in South Dakota, and most of it is sent to ethanol plants.
Hill recently co-authored a study examining farmers’ profits and the health and environmental costs of growing corn in the Midwest, where about 20% of the world’s corn is grown. It found that the health and environmental costs — like ammonia inhalation and water pollution — of current management practices are $25.6 billion per year, exceeding farmer profits, which averaged $4.3 billion per year from 2013 to 2022. Ammonia inhalation is related to ammonia-based fertilizers, which can also be washed during a rainfall event into wetlands, creeks and rivers.
CO2 pipelines
Under the renewable fuel standard, fuels are evaluated using “carbon intensity” (CI) metrics, and GREET helps determine a biofuel’s CI score. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change by trapping heat in the atmosphere.
To improve the CI score of ethanol, projects worth billions aim to build pipelines to trap carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol plants. The projects are eligible for tax credits from the federal government that are intended to incentivize underground carbon storage, known as sequestration.
Two such proposals in South Dakota have had their permits rejected by regulators due in part to landowner opposition, but one of the pipeline projects plans to reapply after adjusting its route.
Hill said carbon from the pipelines could also be used for enhanced oil recovery, promoting fossil fuel use. Carbon dioxide can be injected into aging oil wells, where it mixes with the oil underground, makes it less thick and helps it flow better. It also causes the oil to expand, pushing it toward the wells where it can be collected.
Hill said the federal tax credits for carbon sequestration could end up incentivizing more oil production if the GREET model becomes the “gold standard.”
“The model they want would give the projects tax credits for the CO2 being pumped underground, but overlook the environmental consequences of extracting more oil,” Hill said. He said any honest CI score would take that variable into account.
The remaining company proposing a carbon pipeline in South Dakota, Summit Carbon Solutions, says its project will not be used for oil recovery. But a company executive acknowledged during a regulatory hearing that the pipeline would be a common carrier, which means it could be used by other companies interested in transporting CO2 for oil recovery. Maps show the project’s sequestration site is near the oilfields of western North Dakota.
The Renewable Fuels Association has acknowledged that some carbon capture projects, due to their proximity to oil fields, could supply CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.
Neither the Senate nor the House bill requiring the EPA to prioritize the GREET model has had a committee hearing.
Both South Dakota Searchlight articles are published online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0/
Map: A map showing Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed carbon dioxide pipeline segments in North Dakota, along with sequestration sites and oilfields. (Courtesy: ND Public Services Commission/ND Oil and Gas Division).
Related posts
- Ethanol carbon pipeline update: Summit permit decision in Iowa not expected until next year
- If first you don't succeed: Summit's new route in North Dakota adds thirteen miles of pipeline
- Defying the odds: Meet the attorney for 1,000 clients who beat two pipeline companies
- Summit Carbon stands to benefit from Navigator's canceled pipeline, but IA opponents sue to block Summit Carbon water permit
- Cancel culture: Navigator withdraws ethanol carbon pipeline permit application in Iowa
- Navigator CO2 cancels multistate pipeline project
- Summit Carbon Solutions says ethanol carbon pipeline system won’t be operational until 2026
- Some Iowa landowners were confused by Summit Carbon Solution eminent domain process
- Navigator CO2 pulls its ethanol carbon pipeline permit application in Illinois
- Ethanol carbon pipeline news digest: Gevo aviation fuel needs Summit Carbon Solutions and more!
- Iowa Capital Dispatch: Summit pipeline hearing will resume on Tuesday; Navigator asks Iowa regulators to pause its pipeline permit request
- Iowa Capital Dispatch: Local officials in Iowa have potential to block carbon capture projects
- IA Capital Dispatch: Summit permit process in North Dakota has reached ‘uncharted waters
- North Dakota Public Service Commission votes 2-1 to reopen Summit Carbon pipeline case
- Navigator CO2 has not ‘taken any state off the map’ after SD pipeline permit rejection
- Ethanol carbon pipeline digest: reaction to denial; water use in IA; rich guy resists subpoena
- Iowa utility regulators want to finish Summit pipeline permit hearing by month’s end
- State denies Summit permit; both ethanol carbon pipelines proposed in South Dakota now rejected
- Summit Carbon Solutions forges ahead despite SD PUC staff's motion to deny pipeline permit
- SD PUC staff motion: non-mysterious portents in the air about potential denial of Summit Carbon Solution's pipeline permit application
- South Dakota Navigator pipeline decision might jeopardize Summit Carbon Solutions proposal
- Breaking: South Dakota Public Utilities Commission unanimously denies Navigator ethanol CO2 pipeline project permit
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