A Blue State Asks: Is Carbon Capture Part of Climate Agenda?

February 15, 2023

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by Jeffrey Tomich (E&E News/EnergyWire) ... Less clear, however, is whether (Gov. J.B) Pritzker and Illinois’ Democratic-led General Assembly are willing to embrace carbon capture — a third rail of climate politics — as a complementary solution.

While carbon capture technology and its promises aren’t new, the state has only recently faced the reality of companies seeking permits for pipelines to transport millions of tons of liquefied carbon dioxide from dozens of ethanol and fertilizer plants across the region. The two pipelines proposed so far would each cross hundreds of miles of rural landscape, raising a raft of legal and policy questions — and public pushback.

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State Rep. Ann Williams, chair of the House Energy and Environment Committee and an architect of the state’s 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, said a recent study completed for the Legislature indicated that the state isn’t ready.

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The first of the carbon pipeline projects proposed in Illinois — Navigator CO2 Ventures’ $2 billion Heartland Greenway — could be up for a permit decision from Illinois regulators as soon as early next year. Another proposal from Wolf Carbon Solutions US LLC and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. isn’t far behind.

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“We need to look at landowner rights, groundwater issues, public health, climate issues, making sure an industry is liable if something goes wrong,” Williams said. “We don’t want as a state or local government to absorb all that liability and the risk.”

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Illinois’ geologic potential for hosting carbon sequestration projects is well known. The key is the Mount Simon rock formation — a thick slab of porous sandstone that underlies much of the state.

The Mount Simon formation is a reason the state was chosen as part of a nationwide sweepstakes 15 years ago to host FutureGen, a $1.5 billion demonstration coal plant with carbon capture that was to be partially funded by the Department of Energy.

Ultimately, FutureGen and a successor project fizzled when the Obama administration pulled funding.

But a less-publicized effort, also funded with millions of dollars from DOE, has operated for more than a decade at Archer-Daniels-Midland’s Decatur, Ill., ethanol plant. That’s where more than 3.5 million tons of CO2 has been captured and injected into the Mount Simon formation a mile and a half below ground.

The potential for hosting future carbon sequestration projects led the General Assembly to pass a law two years ago, during the climate bill debate, requiring a study of the potential for carbon capture to help the state meet its climate goals.

The study by scientists at the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was overseen by a government advisory committee that included Williams. Conducted at the request of the Legislature, the report concluded that carbon capture, utilization and sequestration “could play an important role in achieving the state’s decarbonization goals and equitable clean energy workforce development.”

The 94-page report included two dozen recommendations for how to both encourage the industry’s growth and protect landowners, the environment and public safety.

Among them: urging the state to clarify legal ownership of underground pore space — small, underground cavities where CO2 is stored — to help protect landowners. The report suggests establishing a state-level siting authority for CO2 pipelines and identifying existing infrastructure rights of way and suitable locations for pipeline corridors.

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Environmental groups, skeptical of carbon capture proposals, likewise said the study’s recommendations show a need to slow or pause pipeline projects already underway until additional regulation and legal protections are established at the state and federal levels.

There are “critical protections that need to be in place that aren’t currently,” said Christine Nannicelli, senior representative of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “We have significant regulatory and legal gaps, and Illinois currently is unprepared and unprotected.”

The Sierra Club is part of a broader coalition of environmental groups in Illinois working with Williams. The groups are also critical of the carbon capture study for what it did not touch on — the potential for using captured CO2 to expand oil production.

In fact, the legislation authorizing the study explicitly excluded looking at carbon capture for enhanced oil production.

It is that notion of using carbon capture technology to enable fossil fuel production and use that gives pause to environmental groups.

Nanicelli said the coalition will evaluate carbon capture proposals in Illinois on a case-by-case basis. But the group is wary of projects that would further the use of oil, gas and coal.

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“This is something that has been contemplated by the state for many years, so I think it’s kind of a misnomer of that this is somehow new or novel,” Burns-Thompson (Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, vice president of government and public affairs for Omaha, Neb.-based Navigator CO2) said.

A decade ago, however, Legislators weren’t envisioning a regional network of pipelines to collect and transport CO2 from ethanol plants.

But the adoption of key policies — low-carbon fuel standards in California and elsewhere on the West Coast and federal incentives — has turbocharged interest in carbon capture.

Most recently, the Inflation Reduction Act expanded 45Q tax credits for permanent geologic storage of CO2 to $85 per metric ton.

“At $85 a ton, you make a lot of industries interesting,” said John Thompson, technology and markets director for the Clean Air Task Force. “The potential to build this industry is only now kind of coming into focus. Within the next six months, we’re going see a lot more public announcements.”

Add in funding for regional carbon pipelines and grants for support of sequestration sites that were part of the 2021 federal bipartisan infrastructure law and Illinois’ demonstrated experience with injecting and storing CO2, and it’s a recipe for surging interest in the types of projects being proposed in the state today, he said.

Ethanol plants top the list of viable projects today, Thompson said, because they produce such a pure stream of CO2 that carries a lower cost to capture. But ultimately, carbon capture could be installed at other industrial plants, natural gas-fired power plants or even coal plants.

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Thompson said Wolf Carbon Solutions, one of the same companies proposing a CO2 pipeline through Illinois, built the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, a 150-mile Canadian CO2 pipeline, without using eminent domain.

“Pipeline companies need to be a lot more creative about how they address this issue,” he said. “Farmers should be champions of this. And if [the companies] don’t do it right, they become opponents. That’s really in their hands.”

Still, Thompson insists that renewable energy alone is not enough to meet the nation’s climate goals and said the country must pursue other solutions. He cites Princeton University’s Net-Zero America study, which similarly concludes that carbon capture on a large scale will be necessary under any of six analyzed pathways to achieve President Joe Biden’s goal of a net-zero economy by midcentury.

Specifically, the study cited the need for geologic sequestration of 1 billion to 1.7 billion metric tons of CO2 per year by 2050 at more than 1,000 facilities across the United States. READ MORE

Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage in Illinois (Prairie Research Institute)