A familiar, ubiquitous, even mundane technology – underground pipelines – could be the show stopper for the Biden administration’s ambitious plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fueled electric power plants. Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency is counting on carbon capture and sequestration – pulling the CO2 out of the flue gas and burying it in underground formations.
Getting the CO2 from the power plant to the storage site will require underground pipelines, which are already proving controversial. A headline last February in the Chicago Tribune – “A battle simmers in Illinois over plans to pipe in and store millions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide underground” – presaged what may be a political and regulatory bottleneck to new pipelines. The Tribune reported, “The fight over carbon dioxide — what to do with it and where to store it — is ramping up in Illinois.”
According to the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association (LEPA, which recently changed its name from Association of Oil Pipelines in order to reflect the advent of CO2 pipelines) notes that some 5,000 miles of CO2 pipelines already exist, mostly for enhanced oil and gas recovery. Estimates of the impact of the Biden CCS policy are that some 60,000 miles of new carbon dioxide pipelines will be needed, as well as development of underground storage sites.
The U.S. now hosts some 2.8 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, far eclipsing the ambitious plans for CO2 pipes, according to American University’s Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy.
One of the most ambitious CO2 projects is Omaha-based Navigator CO2’s Heartland Greenway project, which is trying to develop a five-state, 1,300-mile CO2 pipeline network serving industrial customers – fossil and biofuels companies: Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Beginning in 2025, the project is planned to be able to capture and store 15 million tonnes annually.
Navigator CO2 was developed by Dallas-based NES Midstream LLC (aka Navigator Energy Services), a gathering, transportation, storage, compression and gas processing firm.
Navigator has already run into the kinds of problems that may turn into major bottlenecks for CO2 pipelines. WGLT, the NPR station of Illinois State University, reported that Navigator’s plans “have led to a lot of outcry from the people whose lands the pipeline would run near or under. They say the pipeline could have a negative impact on agriculture land use, and they’re also concerned about the dangers of a CO2 pipeline rupture.”
On Tuesday (July 25), the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission began hearings on Navigator’s 112-mile segment in the state. Local landowners are opposing the project, while unions are supporting it. An attorney representing landowners told the commission, “This proposed project is 112 miles of disruption and destruction of the very way of life of thousands of South Dakotans. It will have a negative economic impact on their farming and ranching and other businesses.
South Dakota news service The Center Square reported, “Opposition mounted against Navigator’s project and a separate carbon dioxide pipeline proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions. An evidentiary hearing on the Summit project is set for September.”
Natural gas pipelines, the most common manifestation of the technology that will be used for transporting CO2, are already widely controversial, as the long-running fight over the Mountain Valley Pipeline running across West Virginia to southern Virginia demonstrates. It has faced multiple challenges in federal courts, by local opponents, and in Congress. Yesterday, in what is likely the final challenge, the U.S. Supreme Court gave a green light to resuming construction.
Gas pipelines have a major siting advantage not available to CO2 pipelines, which may make the carbon dioxide pipes more difficult to site. In 1947, as gas pipelines were just beginning to develop, Congress amended the 1938 Natural Gas Act to permit natural gas companies to exercise the power of federal eminent domain over private land and indigenous territory (despite the often ignored doctrine of tribal sovereignty). In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the power granted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to grant federal eminent domain also applies to state-owned lands.
That authority is not available to interstate electric transmission, which has made siting those crucial infrastructure projects glacial at best and often impossible. The same may be the case for CO2 pipelines that need to cross state lines. That means that state law, which may also empower localities to enact their own land use laws, will govern rights of way for the pipelines.
In the South Dakota utility commission hearing, two counties moved to allow them to respond to any Navigator land uses that conflict with their local ordinances. Commissioner Chris Nelson responded to the motions: “The burden is on Navigator to prove that this statute should be invoked by us. They are going to make that case to us over the course of the next two weeks, and if there’s sufficient time in the next two weeks for Minnehaha and Moody counties to provide their rebuttal argument, let’s do it in these next two weeks.”
CO2 pipelines will not escape all federal regulation. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration regulates pipeline safety after the projects go into service. The American University Carbon institute notes that “from 2001 to 2020, there have been 5,750 significant pipeline incidents onshore and offshore, resulting in over $10.7 billion worth of damages.” The National Transportation Safety Board also investigates significant accidents.
The pipeline lobby LEPA acknowledges this federal regulatory regime, which now applies to the existing CO2 pipelines. State safety regulation is also in play. Some have argued that it may be wise to relax the safety regulations for the CO2 pipelines, as carbon dioxide is not a hazardous material. But that concept has not gotten much attention, nor does it appear that it would provide a significant boost to CCS policy.
–Kennedy Maize
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