Farmers in Iowa who sell their crop to ethanol makers have been thrust into President Joe Biden’s search for a climate policy that both slashes greenhouse gas emissions and satisfies crosscutting political interests
HARDIN COUNTY, Iowa —
At the center of the drama are three proposed carbon dioxide pipelines — greenhouse gas superhighways that would traverse the nation’s breadbasket, carrying emissions from ethanol refineries to storage in underground rock formations in North Dakota and Illinois. Conservative farmers, such as Kathy and Ray Stockdale, are teaming up with the Sierra Club in open rebellion against the ethanol industry.
“I told God that I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to be involved at first and he said, ‘No. I want you to,’” Kathy Stockdale says. “Because the land ultimately belongs to him and I need to take care of it. It is our responsibility.” Summit Carbon Solutions, financed by a Rastetter company, plans to capture 12 million metric tons of carbon a year from the smokestacks of ethanol makers in five Midwestern states. That’s roughly equivalent to trapping the emissions of a large coal-fired power plant. The 2,000-mile pipeline, called the Midwest Carbon Express, would transport the heat-trapping gas to North Dakota to be permanently sequestered underground.
Now the Stockdales and other farming families across Iowa trying to stop the pipeline are turning to familiar playbooks. Over a decade, a well-organized anti-fossil fuel movement successfully derailed the Keystone XL pipeline expansion that would have carried more Canadian oil to the Gulf Coast. In the era of divided government, Manchin of West Virginia, a coal-state Democrat, has outsize influence. He’s pushing for expanded tax credits for CCS — despite the epic technological and market failures, along with exorbitant costs, that have killed or mothballed projects in recent years.
But CCS remains a favorite climate solution for Republicans from states with a stake in the fossil fuel economy because it would keep coal and natural gas-burning plants and factories humming. And if they are ever built, tens of thousands of miles of CO2 pipelines crisscrossing the United States are lifelines for regions with jobs, profits and cultures tied to the dirtier sources of energy.
The 65,000 miles of new carbon dioxide pipelines that would be required to meet the White House’s national goals dwarfs the current capacity for moving carbon underground. | Rogelio V. Solis/AP Photo Maps from Summit and Navigator show the pipelines are not sticking to existing rights of way. Individual landowners complaining about plans for the pipeline to cut diagonally across their farm fields and close to their homes have filed objections with the Iowa Utilities Board. A rural water district says the Summit plan would “cause damage to every water line crossed” in their area.
His group is polling Iowans to understand what future projects could do differently to gain more grassroots support. Part of the problem, they believe, is that the pipeline companies are mapping out routes before going to communities and landowners first.Farmers fear a pipeline running under their land could ruin their crop yield and potentially expose their families to a hazardous gas.
“If we have this opportunity to capture the CO2 and put it back where it came from, we maybe have a duty to do that,” he said. “I have struggled with it myself, but I am a Christian and I look back to biblical times when God called Joseph to Egypt to work with them and fix things,” Stockdale said. Summit could earn $600 million annually in federal tax credits if the company’s current carbon storage projections pan out. The $7.2 billion in tax credits the project could earn over 12 years would more than cover the pipeline’s estimated $4.5 billion up-front building expenses.
The pipeline proposal is not the first time Rastetter has also courted controversy. A decade ago, as a member of the board of regents at Iowa State University, he involved university professors in a business enterprise in Tanzania. His firm, AgriSol Energy LLC, planned to spend $100 million to lease huge parcels of land and develop a commercial farming business in the east African country.
Summit says it’s driven by the climate crisis, not political connections. Carbon capture, they say, is workable on the ground. Ethanol emissions are easier to capture than other sources of carbon pollution, and the pipelines can be built. “The time is right,” said Jimmy Powell, Summit’s chief operating officer, who came to Iowa after working at Kinder Morgan Inc., one of the world’s largest pipeline operators, and for oil producer BP on projects in Brazil and Oman.
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