A Left-Right Alliance Puts Iowa’s CO2 Pipelines on the Presidential Agenda

July 31, 2023

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by Jonathan Weisman (New York Times) Liberal environmentalists and conservative landowners, led by the former congressman Steve King, are pressuring Republican candidates to oppose three Midwestern pipelines. --

Emma Schmidt, a lifelong environmental activist in Rockwell City, Iowa, had long searched for potent allies in her fight against a massive carbon dioxide pipeline planned for her state.

But she never expected to find herself at former Representative Steve King’s house, making her case as she stared up at a pistol in the paw of a taxidermied raccoon in his home office.

That meeting in June between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican who lost his seat in Congress in 2020 after incendiary racist comments was the beginning of a left-right alliance that is trying to push the debate of the pipeline to the forefront of the heated G.O.P. presidential caucuses.

“We’re putting in a whole lot of money into pipelines that are not necessary, that bulldoze their way through some of the richest farmlands in the world, to sequester CO2,” said an incredulous Mr. King on Tuesday.

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Earlier this month, an Iowa woman seemed to stump the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, when she asked how he would “help us in Iowa save our farmland from the CO2 pipelines.”

Mr. Trump stammered that he was “working on that” and that he “had a plan to totally, uh, it’s such a ridiculous situation,” before reassuring the crowd, “if we win, that’s going to be taken care of.”

The moment has been laughed off as a show of Mr. Trump’s ability to bluster his way through anything, but the issue is tricky: Several of the Republican candidates have cast doubt on the established climate science and would seem disinclined to back a project aimed at reducing carbon emissions. But opposing the pipeline also means opposing Iowa’s all-important ethanol industry.

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Presidential candidates have tried to skirt the issue; most campaigns declined to comment, including Mr. Trump’s. But campaign aides said this week that they knew a time for choosing was coming. The first public hearings on the Summit pipeline will begin on Aug. 22 in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expecting questions later this week in a swing through the state, according to people familiar with the campaign.

The left-right alliance is giving voice to Iowa landowners infuriated by the prospect that their land could be seized by eminent domain for the pipelines.

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Supporters — including agribusiness conglomerates and oil and gas tycoons — see the projects as a way to persuade liberal states like California it is possible to both continue ethanol production and fight global warming.

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“Climate change money should be spent on things that are proven to actually work,” said Jessica Mazour, the conservation program coordinator of the Sierra Club in Iowa, who is helping to unite environmental activists with conservative farmers who doubt climate change is real.

The unusual alliance can be strained. Sherri Webb, 73, who owns 40 acres of farmland in Shelby County, Iowa, said she had her doubts about climate change: “I don’t believe it’s as bad as some people are thinking.” If anything, she added, she worries more about taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and away from her crops.

But it was the threat of eminent domain that got her involved in the fight against the Summit pipeline.

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Despite Mr. Trump’s more recent comments, when he was president, his administration said it had no plan to stop the pipelines. In fact, a tax credit created in 2008 to incentivize carbon capture programs like Summit, Navigator and Wolf was expanded by a budget law in 2018 that Mr. Trump signed, and expanded again by a tax bill signed by Mr. Trump in 2020. The credit was expanded yet again by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

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Critics say Mr. Trump has every reason to oppose the pipeline now. He has called climate change a “hoax” devised by China, so the pipelines are billed as a solution to a problem he does not recognize. Even better, he could use his stated opposition to continue a feud with Ms. Reynolds, whom he has blasted for refusing to endorse him, said Jane Kleeb, a Nebraska Democrat and anti-pipeline activist who has been pressing Mr. Trump to get involved.

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One candidate, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, does not have the luxury of silence. He has already championed the Summit pipeline, which would end in his state, telling The Bismarck Tribune in May that two carbon dioxide pipelines have operated safely in the state for years. READ MORE

In unusual move, Sierra Club, Iowa Farm Bureau join forces to get pipeline company data (Des Moines Register/Yahoo! Finance)

Judge rules against Summit over deals with ethanol plants: Company resists order it share details privately with Farm Bureau, Sierra Club (Iowa Capital Dispatch)

The Midwest Is Ground Zero for the Fight Over Carbon Capture Pipelines: The Biden administration is all-in on carbon capture and storage. But the pipelines needed to move the greenhouse gas around face stiff local opposition. (Bloomberg)

John Phipps: Are Farmers For or Against Carbon Pipelines in the U.S.? (AgWeb)

CO2 pipeline politics get messy (Politico's Power Switch)

Excerpt from Iowa Capital Dispatch: The specific terms of a pipeline company’s contracts with ethanol plants in Iowa are key to a decision about whether it deserves a permit to build, an administrative law judge has decided.

As such, the judge said last week that Summit Carbon Solutions should be required to provide that information to the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and the Sierra Club of Iowa, which have sought the information for more than a year.

Summit has challenged the proposed order with the Iowa Utilities Board, which is poised to begin a final evidentiary hearing on the company’s hazardous liquid pipeline permit request in less than two weeks. It’s unclear when the board will make a decision about the order.

Summit has provided redacted versions of the contracts under a protective agreement that limits their disclosure to only attorneys representing the groups, according to board documents. Those attorneys must keep the information confidential.

The company argues that specific details of its arrangements with ethanol plants are not germane to its permit process and that it doesn’t trust certain attorneys to keep them secret.

But Toby Gordon, an administrative law judge for the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals who was tasked by the board to decide the dispute, said the contract details are necessary to verify the economic benefits of the project. Summit’s witness testimony includes claims that ethanol plants will generate 10 to 35 cents of additional revenue per gallon if they connect to Summit’s proposed pipeline system.

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Companies that have proposed two other carbon dioxide pipelines in Iowa have indicated they will be paid by ethanol plants based on the amount of carbon dioxide they transport away from them.

Summit’s arrangements with the facilities are different: The company will be paid a portion of their additional revenues. The company has declined to publicly reveal what percentage it will take.

“Failure to provide the information will lead to the conclusion that Summit is withholding the information because the alleged economic benefits of the pipeline to the agricultural community are overstated and cannot be verified,” Christina Gruenhagen, an attorney for Farm Bureau, wrote to Summit in reaction to its redactions. READ MORE

Excerpt from AgWeb: From Kathy Rosenbohm in Glasford, IL: “What is your feeling about the Wolf CO2 Pipeline being planned. It is to capture carbon dioxide from ADM's Iowa ethanol production, compress it and send it by pipeline from Iowa to Decatur Illinois. It is to be stored underground in Mt. Simon geologic formation in the Illinois Basin. Many are concerned about the safety of the pipeline and underground storage of the CO2. Also is this project really necessary?”

It's hard to answer this without being perceived as insensitive, but like most Americans and farmers, I am largely indifferent.

For projects involving voluntary or involuntary use of private land, the public has three basic attitudes: NIMBY – not in my backyard, where landowners directly affected oppose vehemently; YIMBY – yes in my backyard. This is a new and small attitude in areas where either economic development needs like a factory or high-density housing such as apartments are desperately needed to ensure any future; and YIOBY – yes in other backyards. This is the largest group.

Projects like pipelines, transmission line or solar arrays are bitterly and usually unsuccessfully opposed, but only by those affected.

My experience is you don’t see any citizens who live out of eyesight of a project at public meetings when such projects are proposed. And no neighbor in his right mind would speak up in support.

In this case, the CO2 pipeline is strongly but discretely supported by farmers especially in Iowa so that ethanol plants can lower emissions and stay open. However, if you think ethanol is not truly green, then carbon capture simply prolongs a harmful technology. We’ve had about 7000 miles of CO2 pipelines in use safely for years. CO2 is transported at higher pressures than natural gas but doesn’t explode. The largest danger with pipelines are their natural enemies – farmers with excavators.

We’ve farmed ground when a pipeline was installed, and my experience is it takes over a decade or more for the strip to not be noticed on the yield map. Subterranean storage of CO2 has a long history of minimal risks.

Summing up, pipelines affect less than one percent but affect them 100 percent. The reality is the rest of us are YIOBYs. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Power Switch: Some well-known Republicans have endorsed the planned pipelines as a way to preserve the ethanol industry, a staple of the Midwestern farm economy. But to the party’s far-right flank, the pipelines are part of the “the Green New Deal, radical climate change agenda.”

And while the Biden administration says the pipelines are key to meeting U.S. climate goals, not all environmentalists are on board. Green groups have laid much of the groundwork for local opposition to the Midwest pipeline projects. The Green New Deal as proposed by the progressive Sunrise Movement also does not include carbon capture, which many climate activists see as a way for fossil fuel companies to keep producing.

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Well, that’s awkward: National Democratic figures are promoting the pipelines, which benefit from the $370 billion in energy incentives in President Joe Biden’s climate law.

Major oil and gas companies are also fans, looking to capitalize on generous tax benefits for carbon storage projects.

That’s making it awkward for some high-profile Republican governors, such as Kim Reynolds of Iowa and Kristi Noem in South Dakota. Both have largely avoided weighing in, instead saying the pipelines’ fate is not in their hands.

“Republicans don’t want to touch this,” David Peterson, a political science professor at Iowa State University, told Mike. “It’s a split between big corporate agriculture and landowners.”

The conservative push against the pipelines is also making it sticky for some environmental groups, which support local landowner opposition but don’t want to align themselves with the projects’ more radical hard-right opponents. Those figures include Steve King, a former member of Congress who was sidelined by his own party for making racist comments and was defeated in a primary in 2020. READ MORE