Summit Carbon wants to add ‘lateral’ pipeline through Floyd and Mitchell counties to Absolute Energy ethanol plant

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

One of the companies proposing to build a liquid carbon dioxide pipeline through Floyd County has started the process to be allowed to also build another length of pipeline from the current path near Rockford north to near Minnesota.

Summit Carbon Solutions had announced earlier this month that it has signed an agreement with Absolute Energy, an ethanol plant in Mitchell County near the Minnesota border, to capture and transport that plant’s CO2 as part of Summit’s multi-state Midwest Carbon Express pipeline.

“Summit’s partnership with Absolute Energy will result in the removal and permanent storage of 370,000 metric tons of CO2 per year and builds on recent momentum, including a new partnership with NuGen Energy, a South Dakota producer, and having successfully acquired 70 percent of its pipeline route through voluntary easements with nearly 2,500 landowners,” Summit said in a press release.

This week, Summit filed a request with the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) to schedule public informational hearings with property owners in Floyd and Mitchell counties who would be affected by the additional 31-mile “Absolute Energy lateral.”

As part of the process of getting a permit from the IUB, pipeline companies must hold public information meetings with a member of the IUB, company officials and a member of the Iowa Office of Consumer Advocate, and individually invite all property owners within a corridor area where the underground pipeline is proposed to be built.

Summit is requesting that IUB schedule a meeting in Floyd County and another in Mitchell County on either Tuesday, Aug 8, or Wednesday, Aug. 9, with a backup date of Wednesday, Aug. 16.

The company is requesting that one of the meetings be held in the afternoon and the other in the evening on the same date. It has lined up the Youth Enrichment Center at the Floyd County Fairgrounds near Charles City for the Floyd County meeting and the Cedar River Complex Event Center in Osage for the Mitchell County Meeting, it said in its letter to the IUB.

The proposed lateral would be a 6-inch pipeline that would join the previously proposed pipeline near the northeast edge of Rockford then proceed north between Nora Springs and Rudd into Mitchell County, connecting with the Absolute Energy plant near Mona, just south of the Iowa-Minnesota border.

The initial Summit Carbon pipeline proposal, along with a similar project by Navigator CO2 Ventures called the Heartland Greenway System that would also involve Floyd County, requires permanent easements from the property owners of the land where the pipelines would be buried.

Although both companies stress that their goal is for voluntary easements, Summit, the project that is furthest along, has already started the process to be granted the right to use eminent domain to force agreements with property owners who won’t sign voluntarily.

The potential use of that process, as well as concerns about pipeline safety, health risks and potential damage to farmland, has resulted in very vocal and passionate opposition to the pipeline projects.

The IUB announced last week that it will begin the permit hearings for the Summit pipeline application in August, two months earlier than originally proposed by members of the IUB who have since been replaced by Gov. Kim Reynolds and far earlier than pipeline opponents have been urging.

The projects would capture relatively pure carbon dioxide from ethanol plants in the Midwest, pressurize it into a liquid, then transport it to sites either in North Dakota for Summit or Illinois for Navigator, where it would be pumped into geological formations far underground for permanent storage, called sequestration.

The pipeline companies and ethanol companies would earn profits from federal tax credits designed to promote removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to ease the impact of climate change, and from being able to sell ethanol at premium prices in markets that have low carbon requirements for fuels, such as in California.