South Dakota Turns Thumbs Down On CO2 Pipeline Proposal – CleanTechnica

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A pipeline is a pipeline is a pipeline. Or is it? There are over 2.6 million miles of oil and gas pipelines in the US, according to the Department of Energy. How did they all get there? Largely because of a legal principle called eminent domain, which allows governments to expropriate private property rights for public purposes such as building or widening roads or extending runways at airports. The theory is that the public good should prevail over private property rights if the ability to meet needs of the community at large is strong enough. Governments must compensate property owners, but legal wrangling over what is fair compensation is common. There are attorneys, accountants, and engineers who make entire careers out of litigating such disputes, and they seldom go hungry.

But there is a sting in the tail of this particular legal principle. Often, private companies prevail on state or local governments to take land by eminent domain for quasi-public purposes that directly benefit private interests. Sports stadiums are a classic example, but there are many others, one of which is building more pipelines, because 2.6 million miles of them is clearly insufficient for America’s needs. But not all pipelines are the same. If those underground highways carry petroleum or methane gas, that is ipso facto a matter of vital national interest. Those pipelines must get built to support America’s need for energy dominance. But if the stuff moving through a proposed pipeline is not a fossil fuel, then stop the presses! All bets are off.

Anti-Pipeline Law In South Dakota

South Dakota has 304 miles of transmission and 5,367 miles of distribution pipelines. Summit Carbon Solutions plans to construct an $8.9 billion, 2,500-mile pipeline to carry carbon dioxide from the dozens of ethanol facilities in the Midwest to sites in North Dakota, where it will be injected deep underground to be stored for millions of years — or a least a few weeks — thereby keeping it out of the atmosphere, where it might contribute to global overheating. The problem is, to get from the Midwest to North Dakota, conveniently, one needs to go through South Dakota and that state, which never met a pipeline it didn’t like, has suddenly developed an aversion to carbon dioxide.

In fact, according to the Associated Press (we prefer to use news sources that refuse to knuckle under to fascists), Larry Rhoden, that state’s Republican governor, last week signed a new law that bans the taking of private property for building carbon dioxide pipelines. “I made my decision based on my own consideration of the facts, the policy arguments, legislative history, my own opinions and experience, and my judgment about what is best for South Dakota,” Rhoden said. It is not immediately clear how Summit can move forward with its project if it cannot build in South Dakota.

Summit Carbon Solutions, predictably, was not pleased, claiming South Dakota “changed the rules in the middle of the game.” In other words, they thought the fix was in and were sad to see the economic rewards they expected to gain from their endeavor slipping through their fingers. “This kind of regulatory uncertainty creates real challenges — not just for our project, but for the ethanol plants in South Dakota that now face a competitive disadvantage compared to their counterparts in neighboring states,” the company said. “While this presents obstacles, our project moves forward in states that support investment and innovation, and we will have more news on that soon.”

In South Dakota, the pipeline for carbon dioxide has drawn intense opposition from landowners who fear a taking of their land for the pipeline and the dangers of a potential pipeline leak. Property rights are a passionate issue in South Dakota, where voters last year rejected a suite of regulations that opponents said would deny local control over such projects and consolidate authority with state regulators. Supporters called it a “landowner bill of rights.” The new South Carolina law contains this rather specific language: “Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, a person may not exercise the right of eminent domain to acquire right-of-way for, construct, or operate a pipeline for the preponderant purpose of transporting carbon oxide.” Summit says it has approvals for its pipeline in Iowa and North Dakota, a leg in Minnesota, and the underground storage piece of the puzzle.

Supporters of the pipeline see carbon capture projects such as the Summit pipeline as a way to fight climate change and to help the ethanol industry. Opponents question carbon capture’s effectiveness at large scale and say it allows the fossil fuel industry to continue unchanged. In actuality, it is more like 2% fighting climate change and 98% helping the ethanol industry. Carbon capture projects are eligible for lucrative federal tax credits intended to encourage cleaner burning ethanol. Potentially ethanol from corn could be refined into sustainable aviation fuel — and someday pigs will have wings.

Political Sparks Fly

Karla Lems, a Republican, introduced the law the governor just signed in the last session of the South Dakota legislature. She welcomed the signing and criticized Summit’s “heavy hand” toward landowners, claiming its project is all about tax credits. She is not wrong. Iowa Renewable Fuels Association executive director Monte Shaw fired back, saying South Dakota’s action is unfortunate for neighboring states and “an unnecessary roadblock” between “Midwest corn farmers and much needed new markets. The demand for ultra-low carbon ethanol around the globe is so massive that, at the end of the day, no one state will be able to stop the ethanol industry from accessing that market,” he said in a statement.

Some opponents argue the amount of greenhouse gases sequestered through the process would make little difference and could lead farmers to grow more corn despite environmental concerns about the crop. The cynical among us might suggest that the ethanol program that requires at least 10% of all gasoline sold in the United States has been a multi-decade boondoggle cooked up by Big Ag to divert federal funds into its overflowing coffers. Others disagree, sometimes vehemently.

A farming website that calls itself the New Roots Institute lists a number of concerns people have with growing corn. It says, “There are many environmental harms associated with modern forms of farming, and the same is true of modern corn farms.” Here are a few of the points made by New Roots. It says industrialized corn farms use a lot of water, which is draining groundwater in the middle of the US. The excessive fertilizer from corn farms runs into rivers and oceans, causing dead zones that are harmful to marine life. There is now a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico which threatens animals, plants, and whole ecosystems. Pesticides used on the farms are said to directly harm insects, honey bees, and birds.

In addition, two centuries of industrial agriculture in the United States have led to soil erosion and degradation. Rather than growing corn in polycultures as Native Americans did, US farmers grew corn in monocultures and decimated their topsoil with similar environmental effects to clear-cutting a forest. Soil can store nearly three times the carbon of forests and other types of vegetation, but injecting it with fertilizers makes it hard for living beings to survive. This contributes to long term damage to soil structure, which may make it hard to grow food in the future. In other words, short term thinking focused on greed has long term consequences that are harmful to the human community.

In addition, New Roots says applying fertilizer, using diesel to run tractors, kicking up dust while tilling the land, and pesticide production are all major contributors to air pollution from corn farms, which has been linked to 4,300 premature deaths a year in the US. Applying ammonia is a key culprit in the air pollution created by corn farms. This pollution includes significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change. That’s not all. As well as being a mainstay of intensive crop agriculture, the production of cheap corn is a component of industrial animal farming. It enables concentrated animal feeding operations to confine and feed livestock for part or all of their lives in a way that harms the animals and the environment.

Greenwashing For Fun & Profit

Moving our focus outward, it is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that this is all part and parcel of the carbon capture scam promoted by Big Oil for decades. It doesn’t work, it has never worked, and it never will work at sufficient scale to amount to more than a pisshole in the snow when it comes to addressing humanity’s penchant for polluting the environment for financial gain. Regular reader Dan Allard, who is an actual farmer and knows a thing or two about farming, alerted me to this story in an email that included this (lightly edited) message. “Pipelines crossing entire states to pump CO2 into the ground means insane amounts of energy wasted. Using ethanol as a fuel additive was always a stupid idea to subsidize the over-production of corn. It is a hard crop to grow anyway since it requires tons of chemical pesticides, so over-production is doubly stupid.”

We can be certain South Dakota’s new law has little to do with the environment and everything to do with the state government picking winners and losers in the marketplace, something Republicans say they hate when others do it. Take that for what it’s worth.