Carbon Capture and Storage: From Dream to Reality

January 10, 2023

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by Patrick Miller (UND Today/EERC Solutions) Nearly 15 years ago, before he became CEO of UND’s Energy & Environmental Research Center, Charlie Gorecki worked on carbon capture systems with an eye on a specific North Dakota industrial facility where he believed carbon dioxide could be extracted and safely stored underground.

The idea was to remove CO₂ during the ethanol production process and pump it into an underground geologic formation where millions of tons could be stored, thus reducing the carbon footprint of the ethanol plant and its product.

Gorecki thought the Red Trail Energy ethanol plant near Richardton, N.D., and the geology beneath it represented the ideal opportunity to demonstrate the technology’s promise.

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“The geology made it ideal for carbon capture and storage (CCS).”

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When RTE began to exploring the possibility for CCS in 2016, the North Dakota Industrial Commission steered the company toward the EERC.

“When they called me, we knew how much CO₂ they produced every year, where they could store it and the depth of the storage,” Gorecki remembered. “It probably surprised them a little bit, but we knew right away that CCS at their site was achievable.”

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The project not only enables RTE to be better stewards of the environment, but also places more value on its ethanol in the clean fuels market because of its lower carbon footprint.

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The plant produces 180,000 metric tons of CO₂ annually, created during the fermentation process of ethanol production. However, RTE is now capturing 100% of these CO₂ emissions and injecting at a rate of 500 metric tons per day into the Broom Creek Formation more than a mile beneath the surface. The CO₂ is compressed into a liquid state before being injected underground for permanent geologic storage.

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Gorecki noted that commercial success at RTE’s Richardton plant is a boost to the other larger CCS projects on which the EERC is currently working, including Project Tundra with Minnkota Power Cooperative and projects with Summit Carbon Solutions, Rainbow Energy and Basin Electric Power Cooperative.

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Another notable achievement is that RTE’s CCS project is the first in North Dakota allowed under state primacy, which enables the state to regulate the permitting of CO₂ injection wells. READ MORE

There Are Fortunes to Be Made in the Carbon Capture Gold Rush: Tax incentives in the IRA have set oil majors and manufacturers rushing to break ground on new projects. (Bloomberg)

The Most Suitable Regions for Carbon Storage Around the World (Energy Minute)

What Is Permitting Reform? Here’s a Primer on the Drive to Fast Track Energy Projects—Both Clean and Fossil Fuel -- It’s a return to Washington’s biggest energy debate, with Democrats and climate advocates divided among themselves, and mostly at odds with Republicans. (Inside Climate News)

1 big thing: The growing push to ensure carbon removal has integrity (Axios)

A blue state asks: Is carbon capture part of climate agenda? (E&E News/EnergyWire)

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

Excerpt from 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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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