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co2 pipelines
Climate Campaigners Celebrate Cancellation of Multistate Carbon Capture Pipeline
"Cause of death: citizen activism informed by science."
Oct 20, 2023
Climate action advocates and scientists joined residents of five Midwestern states in applauding Friday after a Nebraska firm canceled plans to build a carbon pipeline, following outcry from the public and opponents of "dangerous, wasteful" carbon capture schemes.
Navigator CO2 Ventures said it was abandoning plans to build the $3.5 billion, 1,300-mile Heartland Greenway pipeline project—whose backers included investment firm BlackRock and Valero Energy—after South Dakota regulators denied a permit.
The company cited "the unpredictable nature of the regulatory and government processes involved," but advocates in the five states that would have been affected credited grassroots campaigning, including by residents who spoke out against the company's plan to potentially use eminent domain to gain access to land.
"As soon as Iowans learned about CO2 pipelines we knew these were not pipelines we wanted in our communities," said Susan and Jerry Stoefen, members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. "Iowans organized to be heard: 'No CO2 Pipelines, No Eminent Domain!' Now is the time for Iowans to find reals solutions to reducing CO2 emissions that don't degrade our land, water, and air."
One Iowa resident summed up the victory as, "A bunch of elderly farmers without internet just took down BlackRock."
Along with Iowa and Nebraska, the pipeline would have cut through parts of South Dakota, Minnesota, and Illinois, where Navigator CO2 planned to store liquefied carbon deep underground after capturing it and transporting it from 18 ethanol plants owned by Poet, the world's largest ethanol producer, and Iowa Fertilizer Company.
The company is one of three firms that have planned to build carbon capture pipelines in the Midwest, promoting what climate advocates and scientists have decried as an energy-intensive, unproven false solution that diverts focus away from efforts to slash fossil fuel emissions and transition to renewable energy.
Summit Carbon Solutions and Wolf Carbon Solutions also have pipeline proposals, but Summit announced Thursday it was delaying construction of its $5.5 billion project by two years until 2026, citing permit denials similar to Navigator's.
U.S. President Joe Biden has made carbon capture a focus of his climate plans, announcing an investment of up to $1.2 billion for two major direct-air carbon capture facilities in Texas and Louisiana earlier this year.
"While the federal government keeps trying to waste billions of dollars to promote these massive carbon pipelines, grassroots organizing is winning the fight to stop these egregious handouts to corporate polluters," said Emily Wurth, managing director of organizing for Food & Water Watch. "These carbon pipelines will not reduce emissions—they are dangerous, wasteful schemes to prolong and expand polluting industries. Instead of throwing away money supporting polluters, the government should invest in proven clean energy solutions, not carbon capture pipe dreams."
In addition to warning that carbon capture is a false solution to the climate crisis, critics warned that a rupture of a pipeline carrying highly pressurized CO2—an asphyxiant—could pose a major public health threat to nearby communities, as one accident did in the town of Sartartia, Mississippi in 2021.
Both Summit and Navigator initially warned residents living in areas that would be affected by the pipelines that they could resort to eminent domain—a legal process by which companies can gain access to land when a landowner refuses to grant it—and Summit has already pursued dozens of eminent domain orders for its proposed pipeline.
Although Navigator has not yet pursued the actions, the company's vice president of government and public affairs, Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, said at a public debate in August that it couldn't guarantee eminent domain wouldn't be used to complete Heartland Greenway.
Biologist Sandra Steingraber, a vocal critic of carbon capture schemes, celebrated the demise of the proposed pipeline, whose "cause of death," she said, was "citizen activism informed by science."
"Piping pressurized supercritical CO2 all over creation," said Steingraber, "endangers people, destroys farmland, [and] does nothing meaningful for the climate."
Earlier this month, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) led a call for Biden to place a moratorium on federal permitting for CO2 pipelines, citing public health concerns.
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Warning of Poisonous Impacts, Omar and Garcia Lead Call for Moratorium on CO2 Pipelines
"CO2 spewing from a ruptured pipeline can suffocate humans and animals without notice," more than a dozen House Democrats wrote to President Joe Biden.
Oct 04, 2023
Reps. Ilhan Omar and Chuy Garcia led a group of House Democrats on Tuesday in urging President Joe Biden to put a moratorium on federal permitting for new CO2 pipelines—infrastructure at the center of unproven carbon capture efforts—until robust safety regulations are finalized, warning that the current regulatory vacuum is a serious threat to public health.
"As an invisible and odorless asphyxiant, CO2 spewing from a ruptured pipeline can suffocate humans and animals without notice," Omar (D-Minn.), Garcia (D-Ill.), and 11 other lawmakers wrote in a letter to Biden. "Transporting CO2 under the extremely high pressure required to maintain a supercritical fluid state can cause ruptures that 'unzip' a pipeline over long distances, allowing CO2 to escapebefore the flow can be stopped."
The House Democrats called on the president to use his executive authority to place a moratorium on federal CO2 pipeline permits until the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) completes work on safety regulations that the agency announced last year.
The lawmakers noted that "current regulations do not cover pipelines transporting CO2 as a gas or subcritical liquid, and are tailored to address the transport of hydrocarbon hazardous liquids, such as crude oil and refined petroleum products, which carry vastly different safety risks."
"New pipeline infrastructure will invariably put more communities in danger given the complexity of transporting CO2 thousands of miles."
There are currently around 5,000 miles of carbon dioxide pipelines in the U.S., according to the PHMSA, and analysts say that most of the existing pipelines are used for enhanced oil recovery—a process that involves pumping captured CO2 into oil wells in an effort to produce more oil.
But the Biden administration is pushing for an expansion of CO2 pipelines as part of what climate advocates say is a misguided and irresponsible buildout of carbon capture and storage infrastructure that's supported by the fossil fuel industry.
The bipartisan infrastructure law that Biden signed in 2021 boosts a tax credit that will incentivize the proliferation of CO2 pipelines, which have prompted major safety concerns and opposition from local communities. Jesse Jenkins, a professor of engineering at Princeton University, toldNPR that the U.S. could have more than 65,000 miles of CO2 pipelines within the next few decades.
The Democratic lawmakers point to NPR's reporting in their letter, writing that their concerns about the safety of the carbon dioxide infrastructure "are exemplified by the 2020 rupture of a pipeline, operated by Denbury Gulf Coast Pipelines, transporting CO2 in Satartia, Mississippi."
Earlier this year, NPRdocumented the harrowing experience of Satartia residents impacted by the rupture. One emergency worker said the terrifying scene "looked like you were going through the zombie apocalypse."
On Feb. 22, 2020, a clear Saturday after weeks of rain, Deemmeris Debra'e Burns, his brother and cousin decided to go fishing. They were headed home in a red Cadillac when they heard a boom and saw a big white cloud shooting into the evening sky.
Burns' first thought was a pipeline explosion. He didn't know what was filling the air, but he called his mom, Thelma Brown, to warn her to get inside. He told her he was coming.
Brown gathered her young grandchild and great-grandchildren she was watching, took them into her back bedroom, and got under the quilt with them. And waited...
Little did she know, her sons and nephew were just down the road in the Cadillac, unconscious, victims of a mass poisoning from a carbon dioxide pipeline rupture. As the carbon dioxide moved through the rural community, more than 200 people evacuated and at least 45 people were hospitalized. Cars stopped working, hobbling emergency response. People lay on the ground, shaking and unable to breathe.
The lawmakers warned that "new pipeline infrastructure will invariably put more communities in danger given the complexity of transporting CO2 thousands of miles with what could create dozens of points of entry and exit for CO2."
"Since PHMSA has authority over the safety of CO2 pipelines, states confront preemption issues, restricting their ability to protect residents from the dangers CO2 pipelines pose," the lawmakers wrote. "The absence of strong regulations leaves urban and frontline communities at greater risk, as carbon capture and storage, which depends on CO2 pipelines to function, rises in prominence."
The PHMSA is expected to release its updated regulations next year.
Jim Walsh, policy director of Food & Water Watch (FWW), applauded the lawmakers' call for a moratorium, saying that "communities across the country are opposing these carbon capture pipelines because they understand the risks they pose to their health and safety." FWW is one of the more than 150 environmental justice groups that demanded a moratorium in May.
"President Biden needs to use his authority to immediately enact a moratorium on permits for these dangerous projects," Walsh said Tuesday.
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Climate Coalition Demands Biden End Carbon Capture Pipeline 'Pipe Dream'
"A moratorium on dangerous and underregulated carbon dioxide pipelines is essential to protect communities and the environment," said one campaigner.
May 30, 2023
More than 150 climate and other advocacy groups on Tuesday urged U.S. President Joe Biden to block authorization of all new carbon dioxide pipelines—which experts say increase emissions while posing serious safety risks due largely to underregulation—until adequate safety rules are enacted.
"We call on you to issue an executive order putting a moratorium on all federal permits for CO2 pipelines and related infrastructure, and urging states to do the same until the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) finalizes robust new safety regulations that protect communities and the environment," the coalition wrote in a letter to the president.
"PHMSA is planning to propose revised regulations in the fall of 2024, in response to a rupture of a pipeline transporting CO2 in Satartia, Mississippi that hospitalized residents and posed significant challenges for first responders who were ill-equipped to respond to such an emergency," the signers wrote. "However, we are facing a massive build-out of CO2 pipelines now; in the absence of updated federal regulations, our communities face the risk of much larger and more devastating ruptures."
\u201cWe were proud to join over 150 other groups last week on a letter calling for a moratorium on CO2 pipelines. \n\nVia @foodandwater: https://t.co/e3Xs7LB6sf\u201d— Imagine Water Works (@Imagine Water Works) 1685475572
CO2 pipelines are used for carbon capture and storage (CCS), an unproven technology in terms of scalability that coalition member Food & Water Watch has called a "false climate solution" and a "lifeline for the fossil fuel industry."
Experts say that, in addition to emitting harmful chemicals like formaldehyde and benzene, CCS actually contributes to a net increase in emissions.
Carbon dioxide pipelines are also prone to ductile fractures from which massive amounts of CO2—a heavier-than-air asphyxiant that can travel long distances at lethal concentrations—can escape. The 2020 Satartia rupture sent nearly 50 people to the hospital and resulted in the evacuation of hundreds of local residents.
\u201cEver wondered why we say that carbon capture is a fossil fuel industry scam, even though it sounds like a good thing? Now you can learn more about why carbon capture is another lie from the fossil fuel industry!\n\nExplore our new info hub on our website. \u2b07\ufe0f https://t.co/4toQ2CxxSm\u201d— Food & Water Watch (@Food & Water Watch) 1685386904
Despite this, the Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month announced new fossil fuel power plant rules that rely heavily on CCS and include plans to build thousands of miles of new CO2 pipelines. Additionally, the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act both include billions of dollars for CCS expansion.
"We need President Biden to listen to the growing chorus of voices who are demanding a stop to dirty energy interests' rush to build dangerous and unsafe pipelines to transport CO2," Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said in a statement. "This industry pipe dream will quickly become a nightmare for communities in the path of these profit-driven schemes that can explode and send plumes of suffocating CO2 for miles."
\u201cCarbon capture is a fossil fuel industry scam that isn\u2019t proven to work at scale \u2013 period. That\u2019s why we need to tell Congress to invest in renewables instead. Will you join us? https://t.co/pdjL7jbwfK\nhttps://t.co/QnyjaS18t6\u201d— Food & Water Watch (@Food & Water Watch) 1684796470
"Pipelines to transport CO2 are the key component of the carbon capture scam that uses lies and misinformation to convince the public and policymakers that these dangerous and expensive projects are something other than a money-maker for dirty energy producers," Walsh added.
Maggie Coulter, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, said that "the Biden administration put the cart before the horse by creating huge subsidies for carbon capture and storage before comprehensive regulations are in place."
"A moratorium on dangerous and underregulated carbon dioxide pipelines is essential to protect communities and the environment," Coulter added.
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