Articles Tagged: Carbon sequestration

While the Iowa Utilities Board will decide whether three carbon dioxide pipelines get state permits, other government bodies must sign off on parts of these multibillion dollar projects. And some local regulations may throw a wrench in the works.

Models that predict consequences of CO2 leak could aid saboteurs, the company argues.

“Without a North Dakota permit, Summit has no project,” wrote Wally Taylor, an attorney for the Sierra Club, in a motion to suspend the permit proceedings in Iowa.

Navigator is the second company to propose a sprawling pipeline system in Iowa to transport captured carbon dioxide away from ethanol plants and other facilities.

The pipeline company resists an order it share details privately with the Farm Bureau and Sierra Club, saying the groups may release the data to the public despite restrictions.

Summit proposed the pipeline to capture carbon dioxide from more than 30 ethanol plants in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, and to store it deep underground in North Dakota.

But the company has yet to file list of properties subject to eminent domain, though it has promised it in May.

A group of South Dakota lawmakers has begun circulating a petition in hopes of forcing a special session to protect private property rights against the developers of a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline.

An ordinance adopted by Western Iowa’s Shelby County that would severely restrict the placement of a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline conflicts with state and federal regulations, judge rules.

Iowa regulators considering requests to delay the evidentiary hearing for Summit’s proposed carbon dioxide pipeline, and there is also a pending motion to dismiss the company’s petition for a permit.

The survey work for Summit Carbon Solutions will help determine the path and depth of the company’s proposed pipeline, which is set for a final permit hearing later this year.

Carbon tax credits are a “challenge to industry that says ‘if you can do this thing that makes sense for the climate, the U.S. government will pay you potentially tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in funding for solutions’,” said Noah Deich, deputy assistant secretary for carbon management at the U.S. Department of Energy.

A 31-mile length of pipe would connect the Absolute Energy ethanol plant near St. Ansgar to Summit’s proposed pipeline network that is to span over 2,000 miles in five states.

The change comes after a shake-up in leadership on the regulatory board. Now two of the three members who will decide on the contentious proposals have been on the board just since May.

A carbon dioxide pipeline company did not properly notify a pair of northwest Iowa landowners before it sought to survey their farmland, a state district court judge has concluded.