WOOD RIVER, NE - The world's largest carbon capture pipeline may get its start here in central Nebraska.
The proposed project would link several Nebraska ethanol plants and could make a green fuel even greener by capturing carbon dioxide.
Trucks are consistently hauling corn to be turned into ethanol at the Green Plains plant in Wood River.
“Each local producer produces a lot of corn, most of which goes straight to that plant so it is very important,” said Hall County Commissioner Scott Sorensen who represents most of rural Hall County.
In an effort to ensure ethanol's long-term viability, plants like Green Plains want to decrease their carbon footprint as the focus on carbon output intensifies.
“It's starting to become real,” said Chris Peterson of Summit Carbon Solutions when discussing the shift from merely talking about carbon reduction to acting on carbon reduction.
The firm has proposed what Peterson said would likely be the longest carbon capture pipeline in the world.
Summit is working with 31 plants in five states, six of which are in Nebraska. The CO2 would be captured at each plant, pressurized, and sent to North Dakota to be stored deep underground.
Hall County commissioners, with questions of their own, say that they have started to hear from farmers as well.
“Big question is land use, putting pipe in itself,” Sorensen said. “They're going to remove a foot of soil before trenching and landowners wonder if it'll get put back and in as good of condition as they say it will.”
When faced with questions about the scrapped Keystone XL pipeline, Peterson emphasized that it is not an oil pipeline and that nothing flammable would be transported, only CO2. Peterson equated the reduction in CO2 to taking 2.6 million cars off of the road while positioning ethanol to be competitive in states that are looking for low carbon fuel.
“A project like this will help give a premium in terms of pricing and demand for ethanol in markets around the country, California, in particular, today that has a low carbon standard,” he said.
The Summit pipeline is estimated to cost $4.5 billion and create thousands of construction jobs and dozens of permanent Nebraska jobs.
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