This week, Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions announced a partnership that will expand the footprint of its massive carbon capture pipeline across the Midwest.

Summit has been working on getting approvals for its proposed pipeline, which spans across a 2,000-mile web of pipelines in five states: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

This project will capture carbon dioxide from ethanol plants, compress the captured CO2, and move it to North Dakota, where it will be permanently stored underground in storage locations.

The company must obtain right-of-way easements from landowners along the project, including much farmland that would be disturbed, lowering production for affected farmers. Landowners who refuse to grant an easement may face eminent domain, allowing the company to take the land.

Now Summit is partnering with South Dakota-based POET, which bills itself as the world’s largest biofuel producer. Summit will connect its pipeline to 12 of Poet’s Iowa facilities and five of its South Dakota facilities. A spokeswoman for Poet said the plan will add about 400 miles to the project’s footprint, but they are still working on the precise proposed route.

“This addition will facilitate the capture, transportation, and permanent storage of 4.7 million metric tons of CO2 annually from the 17 POET bioprocessing plants,” the companies said in a joint statement. The plants in South Dakota will be included in the upcoming state application, and the plants in Iowa will have separate applications filed, the companies said.

Sierra Club’s Opposition

The Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, which opposes the pipeline, said POET previously partnered with Navigator CO2 in a carbon capture project, but in October, Navigator canceled the plan, citing “the unpredictable nature of the regulatory and government processes involved, particularly in South Dakota and Iowa.”

Navigator’s project was to be 1,200 miles, but it included five states: Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Illinois.

The Sierra Club believes this should be considered one whole project, not separate projects and dockets. That means Summit should have to reapply and start over.

“We strongly believe this should be considered as one whole project, not separate projects and separate dockets,” Jess Mazour, Conservation Coordinator at the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, told The Epoch Times. “That means Summit should have to reapply and start over.”

Summit’s originally proposed 688-mile pipeline route through Iowa is currently awaiting a decision by the Iowa Utilities Board, Ms. Mazour said, but because of the extensive expansion of the project, the Iowa Utilities Board should halt any further deliberations on Summit’s request for a permit and eminent domain rights to assess the broader implications.

Hundreds of Iowa landowners have attended Iowa Utility Board meetings asking the state to stop the project.

Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy spoke against using eminent domain for carbon capture projects. Mr. Ramaswamy is now stumping for Donald Trump to be president.

Summit’s founder, Bruce Rastetter, a politically active Republican donor, endorsed Mr. Trump just before the Iowa Caucus.

Tax Credits

Lucrative Carbon Capture is a green initiative aimed at averting climate change, and it is subsidized with tax credits from the federal government.

Landowners have argued that carbon capture pipelines are using their land to enrich the companies and investors seeking them.

Huge government subsidies promise private companies that carbon capture will pay off in the future.

Large-scale carbon sequestration projects receive federal tax incentives, the federal Carbon Capture and Sequestration tax credit, also called the 45Q, which is worth up to $85 per ton for CO2 captured.

Before the expansion, Summit said it planned to store 12 million tons of CO2 per year. The POET project adds 4.7 million tons more, making it 16.7 tons, multiplied by the tax credit, which amounts to $1.4 billion in tax incentives from taxpayers, and tax credits can be turned into cash.

Pipeline companies that have more tax credits than they need can discount them and sell them to other companies. This way, the pipeline company makes a profit, and the company buying the credits gets a break on their taxes, paying less than face value for the credits.