Advanced BioFuels USA

by Timothy P. Carney (Washington Examiner) Iowa’s ethanol industry, which exists only because of federal and state subsidies and mandates, reportedly may collapse if it cannot build massive statewide networks of pipelines for distributing and burying the carbon dioxide emitted by its ethanol plants. These infrastructure projects would require taking farmers’ land through eminent domain.

This issue is bubbling up in Iowa politics, and it could even creep into the Republican presidential contest, which is already focusing on Iowa and Big Ethanol’s political favors.

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Legendary ethanol giant Archer Daniels Midland, along with a few green-energy startups, has filed paperwork to build carbon capture and sequestration networks. These pipelines, according to the plan, would carry carbon dioxide around the state, liquefy the CO2, and store it underground forever. This would bring ethanol closer to being a zero-carbon industry.

Although many experts and scientists doubt this will work, it could be a very innovative solution to the problems caused by rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. But as you might guess, building hundreds of miles of pipelines across Iowa means running pipelines across farmers’ lands.

“Summit and Navigator will seek right-of-way easements, both permanent and temporary, from landowners,” the Des Moines Register reports. “Permanent easements would be 50 feet.”

One problem with buying up easements for a pipeline is that it takes only a few holdouts — farmers who find their land more valuable to them than what the pipeline companies are willing to pay for it — to make your project a failure. That’s where the theft of land through eminent domain comes in.

Iowa state regulators currently have the power to take land from landowners for the sake of building pipelines.

State Sen. Jeff Taylor (R) has introduced bills “stripping state regulators of their ability to grant eminent domain powers for hazardous liquid pipelines to requiring pipeline developers to get voluntary easements from 90% of the landowners who live along the pipeline routes.”

If they don’t get this pipeline network, the companies say, the ethanol industry in Iowa will collapse. It’s not a new position for the ethanol industry: depending on big government for its profits.

So how does this play into GOP presidential politics?

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Trump is also a huge fan of eminent domain for corporate gain. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has opposed ethanol’s corporate welfare agenda.

Will Trump keep up his crony capitalist record on this issue, or will the unpopularity of stealing farmers’ lands and the weirdness of carbon capture change his thinking? READ MORE

A Different Kind of Pipeline Project Scrambles Midwest Politics: Plans that would bury carbon underground rather than release it in the air have stoked debate over climate and property rights, creating unlikely alliances and stirring memories of fierce battles over oil. (New York Times)

Ethanol advocates warn of lower Iowa corn prices without pipelines (Iowa Capital Dispatch)

EXPERT STUDY FINDS CARBON SEQUESTRATION VITAL TO FUTURE PROFITABILITY OF IOWA CORN PRODUCTION (Iowa Renewable Fuels Association)

Iowa farmers face $1 billion-a-year hit to income without carbon pipelines, report says (Des Moines Register)