Farmers, ranchers, and other rural community members across five Great Plains states and Illinois — many of whom were previously sued by developers of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines wanting to build through their land — are finding their property, safety and livelihoods encroached upon yet again by corporations. This time, they’re coming up against developers, many with fossil fuel ties, who are seeking to cash in on climate solutions tax credits to build a massive network of carbon dioxide (CO2) pipelines across the United States.
The concept of whisking away carbon pollution from industrial facilities to inject into caverns below the Earth’s crust for storage is at least a 15-year-old concept. Lee Raymond, ExxonMobil’s former CEO, died in 2007. called the practice “the Holy Grail on coal-fired power plants,” noting, however, that more comprehensive carbon capture, transit and sequestration systems for other industrial facilities would be a “huge, huge undertaking” that has “never been demonstrated at scale.”
Numerous iterations of maps have been created in government documents and by energy-focused nonprofits, including the. Clean Air Task ForceThe Carbon Capture CoalitionThe map gives a glimpse of a potential future network with tens of thousands miles of carbon dioxide pipelines, utilization or disposal sites. The maps show nodes and arteries that run from southern Maine and northern Montana to the Gulf Coast and then waving through Idaho, California, and the Pacific Northwest.
Summit Carbon Solutions is developing the Midwest Carbon Express, one of the largest pipe systems currently in use. As the Des Moines Register reportedContinental Resources, the largest North Dakota oil driller, will finance $250 million of the $4.5B project. Its founder Harold Hamm was the original funder. helped popularize fracking. The network is intended to transport carbon pollution from ethanol plant in Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska over approximately 2,000 miles. It will be buried underground in Bismarck (North Dakota).
The Heartland Greenway, another CO2 pipeline, is also planned for the area. However, it will extend further southeast into Illinois. It’s a project of Navigator CO2 Ventures, and is designed to accomplish a similar objective, ultimately storing CO2 below ground in central Illinois. The Heartland Greenway is expected 1,300 miles long.
The Midwest Carbon Express will travel through Orchard, Nebraska’s sandy soil. Beverly Krutz, who is a retired second-grade teacher, lives there with Robert Krutz (ex-dairy farmer). The couple grows native grasses to feed cattle, which they’ve been doing for 36 years. “This is what we live and survive for,” Beverly Krutz told Truthout.
Back in 2015, the couple refused to negotiate the sale of an easement — legal access to a portion of their property — to TC Energy, the company that sought to build the now-canceled Keystone XL pipeline. Representatives repeatedly showed up on their land uninvited, parking 10 vehicles deep along the road abutting the Krutzes’ pasture, ducking under the fence, escorted by the sheriff, and surveying the land against the Krutzes’ will.
Developers were granted the power eminent title, which they used for suing the Krutzes. They won, and gained access to the Krutzes’ land.
However, the Keystone XL pipeline was canceled in July 2021. On account of a new legal “easement team” co-op formed by a firm called Domina Law, the Krutzes, along with dozens of other landowners, got their easements back. TC Energy was forced to pay all the families’ legal fees.
They thought they’d dodged a bullet, but just weeks later, in August 2021, the Krutzes got another letter, which eerily resembled the one from TC Energy. Summit Carbon Solutions was the one who wanted to survey their land and negotiate a easement.
“It feels like you’re a little pawn. The big people get to step on you all the time,” Bob Krutz said. “You’re nothing but a pebble on the ground.”
In addition to their opposition to the concept of eminent domain for private gain, the Krutzes can’t imagine their sandy soil would keep a pipeline down for long. Nebraska was hit by historic floodingIn 2019, the majority of their pasture was submerged. Had the Keystone XL been built, the Krutzes said, “anything that would have been buried … would have been on top of the ground.”
The Krutzes are most concerned about the possibility of an explosion. They cite the 2020 rupture of a CO2 pipe in Satartia (Mississippia) as an example. sickened dozens. Marcelo Korc, head of the World Health Organization, said that the incident was unique in the world. told HuffPost.
Their worries are grounded in developers’ apparent rush to cash in on “45Q” tax credits, first made available in 2008These allow companies to make around $30 per metric tonEach year, CO2 is sequestered. The Biden administration has encouraged this payment to rise to $50 per metric tons by 2026. So, if an average coal-burning power plant is outfitted with the technology to capture and bury even just half of the plant’s annual CO2 emissions, developers involved would be eligible for an estimated $100 million in tax credits for one year (in 2026 dollars), or $1.2 billion over the first 12 years of the pipeline’s life. To be eligible for the credit facilities must be constructed by 2026. The gold rush is underway.
Many people are skeptical about the systems. Experts in climate science agree that CO2 must be removed from the atmosphere. However, many of the most prominent projects have been shown to be ineffective. release more carbon dioxideThey store more than they store. ExxonMobil’s carbon capture project near LaBarge (Wyoming) has only three percent of captured CO2 actually stored underground. The remainder was either injected into the ground to extract more oil from depleted wells and vented into the atmosphere. according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Carbon dioxide has distinct properties that are different from petroleum-based liquids currently running through our pipeline networks. According to Pipeline Safety Trust, when CO2 is released from a pipeline, it’s heavier than air. Invisible plumes can travel across many types of terrain and settle in low-lying areas like valleys or ravines. The gas is asphyxiant and can cause death. It can also deprive emergency vehicles of oxygen and stall them, which can significantly slow down or impede rescue operations.
In the midst the flurry in proposed lines, existing policies don’t ensure safe transportation of the gas, Bill Caram (executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust) stated in March. This statement was made before the release of a statement. full reportThis is my opinion. “There are little to no regulations around appropriate siting, limiting dangerous and corrosive impurities, or building the pipelines to withstand the unique properties of transporting high pressure CO2,” Caram said.
While the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — the federal agency charged with regulating pipelines — does regulate pipes transporting CO2 at concentrations above 90 percent, developers dealing with less-pure CO2 can currently operate without complying with any oversight, the report details.
Kert Davies is the director of Climate Investigations Center. The Climate Investigations Center filed a flurry of Freedom of Information Act requestsIn 2021, federal and state agencies will have more detailed information about the network of carbon capture pipes across the U.S. after the explosion in Sartartia. Davies explained. Truthout that the existing plans are on track to add additional risks for residents of rural and urban areas already overburdened with industrial facilities — “where everything else has been put.”
“You’re going to put [them] in poor people’s neighborhoods, along industrial corridors that are already heavily impacted communities,” Davies said. “You’re not going to put [them], you know, through Lexington, Massachusetts.”
Climate Investigations Center has obtained documents that indicate that there are approximately 100,000 miles worth of CO2 pipelines. “It means there’s going to be a thousand eminent domain fights across the country,” Davies added.
One of these disputes is brewing Dickson County in Nebraska. Shelli Meyer was raised helping to raise cattle and horses. Meyer’s farm has been in the family for four generations. In December 2021, just days before the holidays, Meyer’s father gave her a letter from Heartland Greenway. “The look on his face I’ll never forget,” she said. “All he could see in the letter was ‘eminent domain.’”
Meyer’s grandparents had managed to hold onto their farm through the farm crisis of the 1930s. Her parents did the exact same thing during the 1980s farm bankruptcy wave that saw the number of U.S. farms drop to 3%. 300,000 to 30,000. The thought of having a portion of that land seized to bury a pipeline with unknown risks after the “blood, sweat and tears” it’s taken to keep the farm afloat has been devastating, filling the family and surrounding community with “stress and anxiety,” Meyer said.
When a developer is granted the power of eminent domain by a state agency, it is required to prove its project is for “public use.” Much like midstream oil and gas pipeline developers that came before them, developers like Summit and Navigator appear to be leaning on the argument that thousands of jobs will be created through the pipeline’s construction and operation.
They’re also making the case that the project will support farming communities, which Meyer doesn’t buy. One flier she received from Summit reads: “Our project is a win for every farmer in Nebraska, as well as a critical step in helping future generations of farmers enjoy strong corn prices and high land values for decades to come.”
Meyer says that this is illogical, and it’s insulting that developers think farmers will fall for it. In actuality, some landowners worry their insurance companies might drop their policies if a CO2 pipeline is built through their property, and they’d be left uninsured, which would have grave implications for property values.
Landowners, including Meyer and Krutzes, will be able to make contact with other landowners in Nebraska and the surrounding areas in the coming months. Hearings in Iowa and South Dakota are being planned by organizations such as the Sierra Club and Dakota Rural Action. Meyer, the Krutzes as well as dozens of residents will be turning to the Nebraska branch of an innovative organization. legal co-opThis helped to cancel or reverse easements for landowners impacted from Keystone XL and the Mountain Valley pipelines.
“The bright side is that landowners, I think because of Dakota Access, because of Keystone XL, because of all these other pipelines around the country have seen the damage that pipelines do to property, especially farmland, that they’re really stepping up and standing up,” Jane Kleeb, of Bold Nebraska, a citizen advocacy group, said. “But our federal and state governments are way behind where the citizens are.”
