Navigator Kills Midwest Carbon Capture Pipeline Project

Fourth-generation South Dakota farmer Ed Fishbach is leading the charge against a five-state carbon capture pipeline proposal by Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions. Allan Stein/The Epoch Times

A major Midwest carbon capture pipeline project has been killed.

Navigator CO2 Ventures announced on Oct. 20 that it has decided to cancel its pipeline project.

The company has been working to secure permits from states and counties, as well as land easements from private citizens in order to construct 1,200 miles of pipeline across five Midwest states: Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Illinois. The project faced opposition from landowners unwilling to agree to the easements, which, in many cases, would have crossed fertile farmland.

The pipeline would have taken carbon dioxide (CO2) expelled from biorefineries such as ethanol plants and other industries, liquefied the CO2, moved it through the pipeline system, and permanently stored up to 12 million metric tons underground per year.

It’s a green initiative aimed at averting climate change and subsidized with tax credits from the federal government.

“At full capacity, the carbon capture pipeline system will have the ability to capture and store enough CO2 to be the equivalent of removing approximately 2.6 million cars from the road per year,” a Navigator statement from 2021 reads. “Or planting 550 million trees per year or eliminating [the] carbon footprint of Kansas City 1.5 times over.”

The company, which partnered with the BlackRock Global Energy and Power Infrastructure Fund, anticipated starting operations in late 2024, but it never cleared the permitting process.

“The development of Navigator CO2’s pipeline project has been challenging,“ Navigator said in its Oct. 20 statement. ”Given the unpredictable nature of the regulatory and government processes involved, particularly in South Dakota and Iowa, the company has decided to cancel its pipeline project.”

Navigator CO2 CEO Matt Vining said in the statement, “As good stewards of capital and responsible managers of people, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the Heartland Greenway project. We are disappointed that we will not be able to provide services to our customers and thank them for their continued support. I am proud that throughout this endeavor, our team maintained a collaborative, high-integrity, and safety-first approach, and we thank them for their tireless efforts. We also thank all the individuals, trade associations, labor organizations, landowners, and elected officials who supported us and carbon capture in the Midwest.”

Landowners who organized to stop the project were elated by the news.

“Everyone said we have no chance against foreign-backed, multibillion-dollar hazardous pipelines, but when hundreds of landowners band together with a unified legal strategy, we can win,” said Brian Jorde, attorney for Easement Action Teams LLC and Domina Law Group, representing hundreds of affected landowners across the Midwest.

Richard McKean, an Emmet County, Iowa, landowner on the Navigator route, said in a statement that the action proves the power of rural communities and landowners.

“We have always believed that the risk to our safety and damage to the land was far too great,” Mr. McKean said. “From the start, we were told that these projects were inevitable. We are finding a way to fight back against one of the biggest industries. We will continue to fight so that future generations and other communities don’t face the same threat of eminent domain for private gain.”

More projects

Two similar projects are still planned.

“Summit and Wolf are still in the works. But they are on shaky ground as well, and we have no plans to stop organizing against every carbon pipeline project,” Jess Mazour, conservation coordinator at the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Wolf Carbon Solutions has partnered with The Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. to build a carbon capture pipeline spanning more than 300 miles from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Decatur, Illinois. Its phase-one plan includes the capture, transport, and sequestration of 5 million to 6 million tons of CO2 each year. Phase two will increase that capacity to 12 million tons of CO2 annually by expanding Midwest and Ohio Valley industrial markets, according to the company website. Phase three envisions connecting the pipeline to cement, steel, and power plants and other CO2 emitters.

Summit Carbon Solutions is the largest project, with a plan for a 2,000-mile web of pipelines in five states: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

Summit has a consortium of investors, including Summit Agricultural Group, Texas Pacific Group, and the troubled Korea-based energy company SK E&S. Summit intends to continue pursuing the pipeline project, the company confirmed on Oct. 20 in a statement to The Epoch Times.

“Summit Carbon Solutions welcomes and is well-positioned to add additional plants and communities to our project footprint. We remain as committed to our project as the day we announced it,” a company spokesperson said.

“It’s not often you get the opportunity to positively impact an industry that touches every farmer and rural community across the Midwest. We have reached voluntary agreements along nearly 75 percent of our proposed route—we are pleased that the vast majority of landowners and farmers across the Midwest embrace the project.

“We look forward to building a generational asset that will create new markets for the ethanol industry and farmers.”

Financial Incentive

While projects built for the public good, such as electric power lines or roadways, can get land easements through eminent domain, landowners have argued that carbon capture pipelines are using their land solely to enrich the companies and investors seeking them.

“The Summit Carbon Solutions and Navigator pipeline projects are private economic development projects that do not meet the constitutional and statutory requirements in Iowa for the granting of eminent domain,” Iowa state Rep. Steven Holt said in a statement.

“Navigator’s cancellation of their pipeline project is a victory for private property rights in Iowa. We must continue to work to ensure that the property rights of those landowners along the Summit pipeline route are also respected.”

Huge government subsidies promise private companies that carbon capture will pay off in the future. Large-scale carbon sequestration projects receive federal tax incentives, the federal Carbon Capture and Sequestration tax credit, also called the 45Q.

The credit was worth up to $50 per ton for CO2 captured and sequestered before the Inflation Reduction Act. But since Congress passed the act, the credit has jumped to $85 per ton.

Navigator planned to store 12 million tons per year. That’s $1.02 billion in tax incentives from taxpayers. And just as CO2 can turn from gas to liquid, tax credits can be turned into cash. Pipeline companies that have more tax credits than they need can discount them and sell them to other companies. This way, the pipeline company makes a profit, and the company buying the credits gets a break on their taxes, paying less than face value for the credits.