Fairfield hosts pipeline meeting

FAIRFIELD – Jefferson County residents gathered at the Walton Club Thursday to learn about a proposed pipeline to carry concentrated carbon dioxide across Iowa, including the western and southern portions of Jefferson County.

The Iowa Utilities Board hosted the meeting, part of a series of public meetings that the pipeline company, Navigator CO2 ventures, is required to hold before getting the IUB’s approval. Navigator has proposed building a 1,300-mile-long pipeline through five states, mostly through Iowa, to transport carbon dioxide from ethanol and fertilizer plants. The gas would be put under pressure, turned into a liquid, and piped to a site in south-central Illinois for permanent storage.

According to a map furnished by Navigator, the pipeline would enter Jefferson County from the west, pass about 1 mile east of Batavia, running east and south within about a quarter mile of Libertyville and exiting the county just north of Birmingham and into Van Buren County. Navigator representatives who addressed the public Thursday at the Walton Club said the route of the pipeline could be moved as much as a quarter mile in either direction depending on negotiations with property owners and the company’s desire to dig in existing easements and cause as little disruption as possible to population centers.

Navigator plans to file its construction permit with the IUB in May 2022, and to begin construction on the pipeline in 2024.

Overview

Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, Navigator’s vice president of government and public affairs, provided an overview of the project, why the company is seeking to capture carbon, and the science behind putting captured carbon in the ground. She said 20 plants, producing ethanol or fertilizer, have agreed to be part of this project. Equipment will be installed on these facilities to capture the carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere and compress it into a liquid without interrupting the plant’s manufacturing operations. The liquid is transported through the pipeline and injected into a cavity more than a mile below the ground, “far below water resources used by communities and farms, for permanent storage,” according to the company.

Burns-Thompson said it’s not possible to store the sequestered carbon in Iowa because of the state’s unique geology, but added that Illinois’s geology luckily does allow for such carbon storage.

Jefferson County resident Joe Ledger asked the Navigator representatives if their pipeline was a “pilot program” meant to test the feasibility of this new technology. David Giles, Navigator’s chief operating officer and president, said there are 5,000 miles of pipeline worldwide that transport pressurized carbon dioxide just like Navigator is proposing. Burns-Thompson added that the company Archer Daniels Midland is using carbon sequestration technology at its plant in Decatur, Illinois.

Burns-Thompson said the pipeline is a $3 billion investment, including a $1.6 billion investment in Iowa. The participating ethanol and fertilizer plants will be eligible for a federal tax credit up to $50 per metric ton of carbon, and ethanol facilities that reduce emissions could see an extra $20-$40 million in revenue by being able to sell in low-carbon fuel standard markets, the company said.

Environmental debate

The company has touted the environmental benefits of carbon sequestration, saying the pipeline will capture the carbon emissions equivalent to 3.2 million vehicles. However, the company has faced resistance from environmental groups, who worry the carbon will not be permanently sequestered but instead used to pump oil out of the ground in a process called enhanced oil recovery.

The Union asked Navigator spokesperson Andy Bates if the company intends to use its pipeline for enhanced oil recovery, and he said it does not.

“Navigator intends to focus on long-term storage and sequestration,” Bates said. “The proposed project does not coincide with any area where EOR takes place, as the footprint is in the cornbelt and soybean belt. Navigator's business model does not require anything but permanent storage to be economically viable.”

Fairfield resident Michael Moore asked the Navigator representatives if they could promise not to use carbon sequestration for enhanced oil recovery. Giles said that if the company’s customers (ethanol and fertilizer plants) requested it, Navigator would have to look into it, but that there was no plan to do so. He said he could promise that the pipeline would not be used to transport anything other than carbon dioxide, and that would be in the written contracts with landowners.

Jessica Mazour, conservation program coordinator of the Iowa Sierra Club, said her organization opposes the pipeline because it does not believe it will benefit the environment.

“[Navigator] needs to put it in writing that they’ll permanently sequester the carbon,” Mazour said. “We know there’s more money to be made with enhanced oil recovery, and that completely negates their climate change argument.”

Mazour said that by relying on ethanol plants, Navigator is extending the lifespan of the fossil fuel industry.

“When we created the ethanol industry, the idea was to be a transition fuel as we weaned off fossil fuels,” Mazour said. “But projects like this cement fossil fuels into our landscape.”

In a follow-up question, Moore made a similar argument to the Navigator representatives. He said that electric vehicles are going to overtake the new vehicle market, rendering ethanol obsolete. Burns-Thompson disagreed with Moore’s assessment of the electric vehicle industry, and said cars that use some form of liquid fuel will constitute the majority of the United States’s vehicle fleet for several decades.

BloombergNEF, an energy research firm, has published research showing 70 percent of new vehicles will be electric by 2040. Burns-Thompson said the data she saw from the federal government showed that by 2050, 79 percent of vehicle sales will still rely on liquid fuel.

Memories of last pipeline

Some members of the audience talked about bad experiences they had with the last company to build a pipeline through Jefferson County, Dakota Access, which built an oil pipeline five years ago. One resident said it seemed like he was having to talk to a different land agent each time he wanted to get in touch with Dakota Access, and he hoped not to have the same thing occur with Navigator. Giles said Navigator will hire subcontractors to install the pipeline, but that all questions should go through Navigator.

One resident asked the Navigator representatives what percent of the jobs for the pipeline would go toward local Iowans. Steve Lee, executive vice president of engineering, said the company needs a skilled workforce to complete the construction, and that 70 percent of the jobs would go toward the four major trade unions.

Terry Winn, owner and president of Jefferson County Quarry, said he was still being called to fix washouts from the last pipeline through the county. He said that company did not like to hire non-union contractors, and he suspected the same would be true for this new pipeline. The Navigator representatives did not respond to his comment.

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com