For more than a year, a highly divisive debate has raged in South Dakota over two proposed carbon dioxide pipelines that would capture the toxic gas from ethanol plants and carry it to North Dakota and Illinois for disposal underground.
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For more than a year, a highly divisive debate has raged in South Dakota over two proposed carbon dioxide pipelines that would capture the toxic gas from ethanol plants and carry it to North Dakota and Illinois for disposal underground.
The stakes are extremely high, with billions of dollars of investment in play, hundreds of landowners potentially affected and the stability of the state’s $3 billion ethanol industry hanging in the balance.
At the same time, the ongoing state-permitting process and possible legislative involvement hold the potential to forever alter landowner rights in the state and further codify the ability of corporations to implement eminent domain to use the land of property owners without their consent.
And finally, hovering over the entire permitting process is the question of whether carbon-capture technology is a good investment of billions of federal dollars to reduce CO2 emissions.
Complex, multi-faceted discussions and permitting processes are taking place in six affected states over whether — and how — to site, build and put into operation the combined 3,300 miles of pipelines that operators hope to have in place and flowing in 2024.
But the debate in South Dakota, where one pipeline would cross 470 miles and the other 62 miles of mostly East River farmland, has taken on greater significance as Public Utilities Commission members face decisions that could alter the lands, the laws and the lives of South Dakotans for an inestimable number of years.
As regulators in Pierre hold hearings and grapple with approval decisions, here is where things stand.
The two separate pipeline projects, proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions and Navigator CO2 Ventures, both based in Iowa, seek to use carbon-capture and sequestration technology, or CCS, to collect CO2 from ethanol plants and ship it in liquid form through miles of pipelines for burial deep underground.
The 2,000-mile, $3.7 billion Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline would cross 469 miles in South Dakota, carrying 12 million tons of CO2 northward each year from 32 ethanol plants in five states to a site in central North Dakota, where the CO2 would be buried and permanently stored more than a mile underground.
A second CO2 pipeline, a $3 billion, 1,300-mile project proposed by Navigator COs Ventures, would capture 15 million tons of CO2 each year from 20 ethanol and fertilizer plants in five states. The Navigator pipeline would cross 62 miles in South Dakota and terminate at a site in central Illinois where the CO2 would be buried 6,400 feet underground.
A fundamental question among climate-change scientists is whether the practice of CCS is the best way forward to reduce carbon emissions. Also in play is whether spending billions on CCS is the best use of taxpayer money and industry investment in the effort to reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases and protect the planet from climate change.
The two pipelines could keep nearly 30 million tons of carbon dioxide a year from the atmosphere, said Matthew Fry of the Great Plains Institute.
“We’re going to transition away from fossil fuels eventually, but it isn’t going to happen in my lifetime,” Fry said in 2022. “So in the space of transition before we can go full green, we’re going to have to do carbon capture to meet climate goals.”
Opponents say the billions would be better spent in reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and in protecting natural methods of CO2 reduction, such as expanding forests. The money could also be used to incentivize industries, including carmakers, to more rapidly advance the switch to electric vehicles.
“You’re trying to take an environmentally destructive activity and rebrand it in a way that makes it appear benign,” said Basav Sen of the Institute for Policy Studies.
“Attempting to capture that carbon and store it in the ground is a non-starter for all kinds of reasons having to do with science, social justice, and economic feasibility.”
The U.S. Congress has been largely supportive of CCS, and has allocated billions in funding to support research and development of carbon-capture projects. From 2010 to 2020, Congress provided $10.7 billion to CCS-related activity and programs, according to an October 2021 Congressional Research Service report. President Biden recently signed into law his omnibus $1 trillion infrastructure package, which provides another $12 billion for carbon-capture research and projects. Much of that funding is available to companies that build and operate carbon-capture projects, in particular through the ongoing 45Q tax-credit program.
Project developers also say the projects would create tax revenues and both initial construction jobs and some ongoing employment for areas where the pipelines are laid.
Dozens of South Dakota landowners, many of them East River farmers, have had their land targeted for use by the pipeline companies, and some fear that eminent domain may be used to dig through their land without consent.
Pipeline construction tears up land owned in some cases for generations by the same families; there’s an inherent risk of leakage; farmland is turned over and taken out of production; drain-tile systems and water-flow patterns can be affected; and payments for use of the land are far from life-changing.
Charlie Johnson is an organic farmer who leases farmland near Madison, and who opposes the CCS pipeline that may pass through the land he farms. Johnson went through a similar process when the Dakota Access Pipeline went through the land.
Johnson believes that there are more worthwhile, viable and sensible solutions to reducing climate change and carbon emissions that don’t include spending billions on capture technology and underground pipelines.
“What we’re doing is creating stress and anxiety for thousands of landowners, we’re tearing up the land, we’re investing billions of dollars that could be invested better,” Johnson said.
Landowners have rallied against the pipelines before state lawmakers and local governments.
Some legislators and county officials are sympathetic, and have tried to block the pipelines. A group of lawmakers has called for a special session to reconsider how and whether the state should allow eminent domain to be used to use land of unwilling property owners, though so far no session has been set.
Meanwhile, state regulators continue to move forward with the approval process, which could continue into 2024.
Several ethanol producers in South Dakota and across the Midwest have signed on to provide CO2 to the pipeline projects. Poet biofuels, the nation’s largest ethanol company based in Sioux Falls, said in June 2022 that it would provide CO2 to the Navigator project.
Ethanol producers see the pipelines as a way to reduce their overall carbon emission scores, which could open new markets for their products, and as part of continuing efforts to reduce overall emissions and stabilize their businesses even further.
Summit officials told South Dakota lawmakers during a 2022 hearing that no fatalities had ever been linked to a CCS pipeline.
But in February 2020, a 24-inch carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured in Satartia, Miss., causing a green gas to be emitted from the break. No residents or responders died, but about 300 people were evacuated and nearly four dozen people were treated at local hospitals. Liquefied CO2 is dense and tends to stay near the ground in a leakage, making it more dangerous than chemicals that may disperse quickly into higher elevations.
Officials with Summit and Navigator say the CCS industry has learned from that incident, and that safety is the top priority for both companies.
— This article was produced by South Dakota News Watch, a non-profit journalism organization located online at sdnewswatch.org.
