by Dan Burns

Dec 12, 2023, 9:30 AM

It looks like carbon capture may not get far

From October:

Navigator CO2 Ventures announced Tuesday that it is putting on hold one of the two biggest proposed carbon dioxide pipeline projects in the Midwest so it can reassess the project.

The company withdrew its application for a key permit in Illinois and said it it was putting all its permit applications on hold. The decision comes after South Dakota regulators last month denied a permit…

“When you organize the families most at-risk of eminent domain, you can stop a pipeline,” said Jane Kleeb with the Nebraska-based Bold Alliance that also fought against the ill-fated Keystone XL oil pipeline. “This is a core lesson we have learned over the years, as pipeline corporations try to bully hard-working Americans into giving up their land for corporate greed.”
(AP News)

A lot of the fundamental opposition isn’t really about concerns that this is just a scam when it comes to mitigating global climate change (which it is). Many of the opponents are farmers, and their friends in nearby towns, who are politically right-wing and don’t much believe in “global warming.” But they sure don’t want big corporations run by outsiders putting big pipelines across people’s fields for unclear purposes. Makes them uneasy and suspicious, as it should.

And I certainly don’t mean to imply that this race is run. Not by a long shot. From the same article:

Summit Carbon Solutions is behind the biggest proposed carbon dioxide pipeline in the area. It is pressing forward with its plans despite regulatory setbacks in the Dakotas. North Dakota agreed to reconsider its denial of a permit for the $5.5 billion, 2,000-mile (3,220-kilometer) pipeline that would cross five states, and Summit is reapplying in South Dakota. A separate hearing on that project in Iowa started in August. And Minnesota regulators plan to conduct a detailed environmental review of the project.

What is particularly significant is that regulators in very red states like the Dakotas, who are normally the most yielding of corporate lapdogs, are bouncing these applications at all. Heck, even here in Minnesota agencies like the MPCA and DNR have been know to act in something other than the clear public interest, to say the least.

What could really end this is backers realizing that they’re not going to get super-rich this way, despite the ill-advised federal subsidies that they intend to milk to the last drop.

A high reliance on carbon capture and storage would be immensely costly, and would cost far more than a rapid decarbonisation programme that does not see widespread deployment of CCS, according to a new study.

CCS is extremely expensive and faces an array of technical challenges — CCS has yet to prove that it can actually capture as much CO2 as many oil and gas companies have promised. But the industry has promoted CCS as one of its favourite climate “solutions” because it would allow existing fossil fuel production to continue.

But a large-scale adoption of CCS would cost trillions of dollars more than a future that relies on CCS only for a narrow set of applications, according to a new study from Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
(Gas Outlook)

Whatever factors do combine to put an end to this nonsense would work for me. I’m not fussy.