The Great Carbon Boondoggle
by Alan Guebert, syndicated ag columnist (“Farm and Food File”)
Read “The Great Carbon Boondoggle, Part 1”
Read “The Great Carbon Boondoggle, Part 2”
Excerpt from Part 1:
“Many policy choices are made on politics alone while other key decision-making elements like cost, science, and even common sense play a lesser or no role at all. In the old days, this political math resulted in–literally and figuratively–“bridges to nowhere” that cost millions and did little other than raise the local politician’s reelection odds. Today, these exercises of magical thinking cost billions and enrich local oligarchs and distant financiers who then, in turn, bankroll the campaigns of favor-delivering politicians to ensure their gravy train continues to run on time. Last November, the Oakland Institute, an independent policy think tank in Oakland, California, published a detailed report on one of these costly, gassy trains, Summit Carbon Solutions’ 2,000-mile carbon pipeline across Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Minnesota…
“While all of that scrubbed pleasant-speak may sound like an innovative, ag-based way to somewhat balance the amount of climate-changing carbon emitted by today’s intensive livestock and cropping systems, the Oakland Institute sees it as a pressurized pipeline of baloney.
In fact, the Institute uses another descriptive B word in the title of its 31-page report that gets right to the heart of Summit’s plan; it calls it “The Great Carbon Boondoggle.” Both this week and next we’ll examine what Oakland found in its deep dive into Summit’s promises, partners, and finances and why now more farmers seem to be denying Summit easements across their land than allowing them. First, however, explains Oakland, backers of Summit’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, overlook “the growing body of evidence exposing CCS as a false climate solution…” Indeed, “Despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent on CCS to date … it has ‘not been proven feasible or economic at scale.’”
Even more damning, the report continues, “Over 95% of the CO2 captured by these plants” -- mostly “ethanol, natural gas processing, or fertilizer plants” -- “is currently used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) ... to boost oil production” that is then refined and burned to create even more CO2. Summit won’t say what the CO2 will, in the end, be used for but maps of its proposed pipeline route show the five-state network ending in North Dakota, home of one of the nation’s largest “frac” oil fields, the Bakken, that relies almost entirely on enhanced oil recovery techniques to keep its thick crude oil pumping and its carbon-black river running.
Furthermore, “Summit also claims the pipeline will ‘bolster the ethanol and agriculture industries,’ by making the ethanol produced at their partner facilities ‘net zero fuel’ by 2030.” More Grade A baloney, says Oakland.”
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Excerpt from Part 2
“Bruce Rastetter, Iowa’s longtime agricultural and political power center, has a sixth sense when it comes to making money... Soon, Rastettter began investing in global ag and local politicians. Today he’s a top collector of both: His Summit Agricultural Group reportedly controls 14,000 acres in Iowa, owns several livestock operations and “ethanol businesses in Brazil,” and has “spent millions on federal, state, and local politics over the past two decades,” notes the Register… “But not even Rastetter has deep enough pockets to bankroll this pipe dream. Enter his network of politicians and investors…
“A May 2022 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, highlighted by Oakland, lists the biggest investors in the Midwest Carbon Express, Summit’s cheeky name its pipeline. They include TPG Rise Climate Fund ($300 million), Continental Resources ($250 million), SK E&S ($110 million), Tiger Infrastructure ($100 million), and Deere & Co., the farm equipment giant whose “size of its ‘strategic investment’... remains unknown.”
What also is known, though, is that most of these investors have deep ties to fossil fuels and some to oil-producing giants like Saudi Arabia. Collectively, Oakland estimates the three CO2 pipelines planned for the Midwest could collect $45 billion in federal guarantees — all transferable to any taxpayer for cash — over the next 12 years. Summit’s share of that juicy federal pie is an estimated $12 billion.
But that’s only one slice. An estimated $7 billion in federal “pilot program” and “development” money is also on the CO2 table. Additionally, several state programs could, figures Oakland, raise the value of each ton of sequestered carbon to a wallet-bulging $250 per ton, or three times what is promised today. And yet, adds Oakland, almost every penny of this lard-laced federal program will prop up “polluting industries… (and) delay the transition away from dirty energy …” Little wonder that ag insiders like Rastetter often move from growing actual hogs to nurturing government-fattened porkers like carbon pipelines. These big pigs, after all, could yield massive profits while greenwashing even more fracking oil billions.”
