Summit Carbon Solutions is prepared to capitalize on Navigator CO2’s decision not to proceed with its plan to build a 1,300-mile pipeline that would transport liquid carbon dioxide for sequestration, Summit's CEO tells Agri-Pulse.
“Certainly, we're open for additional volumes,” Lee Blank said in an interview discussing Summit’s plans for its approximately 2,000-mile-pipeline through five states, including Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, South and North Dakota.
He said he does not know ”all the answers and all the specifics around that as we would move forward,” but he anticipates the company will be filing paperwork with state regulators to add more ethanol plants to the project.
“We have the capacity for additional volume,” Blank said. The company currently has 35 ethanol plants signed up. Navigator had 18 POET plants and about a dozen other facilities signed up.
Ethanol producers are counting on carbon sequestration to further lower their greenhouse gas emissions, making the product eligible for new subsidies and biofuel markets, including sustainable aviation fuel.
In a statement, POET said it "remains committed to pursuing viable technologies that help us maintain access to fuel markets and increase value for farmers. We believe that states that are slow to adopt these technologies risk being left behind."
"The safe and responsible use of carbon capture represents a consequential opportunity to transform rural economies and benefit farm families, much like the bioethanol industry has done over the past four decades. [Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage] technology has the potential to not only further decarbonize bioethanol but also to utilize the captured carbon to meet growing market demand, add value to every bushel of corn and every acre of land, and ensure the prosperity of American agriculture for future generations."
Lee Blank, Summit Carbon Solutions
Navigator said “the unpredictable nature of the regulatory and government processes involved, particularly in South Dakota and Iowa” had caused the company to pull back on its plans for a CO2 pipeline. The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission rejected Navigator’s permit application last month, and staff at the Illinois Commerce Commission had recommended denial of the company’s permit in that state.
Summit also has had to delay its plans, which originally anticipated completion of the project next year, in part because of decisions by regulators in South Dakota and North Dakota to reject the company’s permit applications. If the company can gain approval from those states, construction should begin by 2025 and carbon can begin being sequestered in 2026, Blank said.
North Dakota’s Public Service Commission rejected the permit application in August, finding Summit had not met “its burden of proof to show the location, construction, operation and maintenance will produce minimal adverse effects on the environment and upon the citizens of North Dakota.”
The next month, South Dakota’s Public Utilities Commission found Summit’s 495-mile route failed to comply with setback ordinances in four counties.
Summit is working on new applications for both states.
In South Dakota, for example, the company can "go county by county to work with the various landowners to find those that would be favorable to the project, and maybe those that would not, and then adjust our route as we work our way up through these various counties and be more accommodating on a case-by-case basis,” Blank said.
“I think it's going very well,” he said. However, “We can't reapply immediately. We’re making progress in the counties that we need to be making progress in, but it takes a little time.” The state's PUC will have a year to decide on the new application after it's submitted.
Summit has secured easement agreements for 75% of its proposed route in Iowa and nearly 75% of its entire proposed route, spokesperson Courtney Ryan said. “Additionally, it’s important to note, Summit has secured easement agreements for 90% of its proposed sequestration site in North Dakota,” she said.
For Monte Shaw, head of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, the Navigator exit was disappointing, but “ultimately, I think these projects will be successful.” He said there's "strong support" for the pipeline.
Wolf Carbon Solutions also plans to build a CO2 pipeline from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Decatur, Illinois, but unlike Summit, the company is working to obtain all the necessary easements through voluntary agreements.
Summit has been working to secure as much of the land it needs through easements before seeking eminent domain authority. Wolf has yet to file for a permit with the Iowa Utilities Board.
Shaw says the next year is critical for the future of carbon capture and sequestration projects, interest in which has spiked because of the inclusion in the Inflation Reduction Act of the 45Q tax credit, which provides up to $85 per ton for permanently stored CO2.
“I really feel like what we do over the next year or so is [either] going to put us on the glide path to the 1990s, where we kind of constantly overproduce our markets, or we use [carbon capture and sequestration], we get the GREET model, and we help these projects move forward,” with the end result being the opening of a major new market for sustainable aviation fuel, Shaw said.
The Treasury Department is working on guidance to determine the model that will be used to determine how to measure the carbon intensity of fuels that will qualify to receive a tax credit. The Energy Department’s GREET model is favored by the industry over the CORSIA model, which attempts to measure the indirect land use effects of crops such as corn.
Using corn ethanol as a feedstock for SAF would “unlock the largest market in the history of agriculture,” Shaw said. “We've never had a new market as large as SAF,” he added, estimating that market to be as large as 100 billion gallons.
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“If realized, the SAF market would trigger the largest rural economic boom since the introduction of corn hybrids,” Shaw said in IRFA’s statement on Navigator’s decision.
Opponents of Summit’s project are not backing down, however. Groups such as the Sierra Club and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement have called the CCS technology unproven and characterized the projects as “greenwashing.”
In addition to concerns about pipeline safety and impacts on crop production, they are raising concerns in Iowa about proposed water use by the ethanol facilities connected with the project, urging the rejection of permit applications by the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
Wally Taylor, an attorney for Sierra Club’s Iowa Chapter, accused Summit of using “political clout [to] bully its way through the Iowa political and regulatory system.”
Blank, however, said “we're not doing anything out of the ordinary when it comes to the usage of water.”
The next big development for the Summit project will be a decision by the Iowa Utilities Board on its permit application. The weeks-long public hearing is coming to a close this month, with testimony planned for Nov. 6-8, and Nov. 16-17.
Shaw said he is “pretty optimistic right now. I may be wrong, but based on what I know right now, I do feel like ultimately, these regulatory processes will work out.”
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