The proposed Summit carbon capture pipeline (summitcarbonsolutions.com).
by Dan Burns
Sep 16, 2024, 7:00 AM

Things are looking rougher for the Summit pipeline, all the time

Well, will you look at this:

A group of Iowa Republican lawmakers plans to ask federal and state courts to rule that the Iowa Utilities Commission acted illegally and unconstitutionally in its approval of a controversial pipeline project.

The group of nearly 40 Iowa lawmakers comprising the Republican Legislative Intervenors for Justice announced their plan to sue in a news release Tuesday.

The Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline, “prioritizes corporate interests in tax credits over the safety, property rights, and well-being of Iowa’s citizens,” according to a statement from the group.
(Iowa Capital Dispatch)

I wrote here about public opposition in South Dakota. I looked just now and still couldn’t find anything indicating that lawmakers there are publicly siding with Summit. It looks like GOPers are indeed running scared. Always bear in mind, if you please, that this project is all about greenwashing the hideous debacle that is the ethanol industry.

This tweet is from Chris Jones. He’s the author of a recent book called The Swine Republic: Struggles with the Truth About Agriculture and Water Quality. I bought a copy and will read it soon. I strongly suspect that the general thrust of the book, which details what’s happened in Iowa since essentially the state’s takeover by Big Ag, is readily applicable to much of southern Minnesota as well.

Another one:

A handful of governments have spent nearly $30 billion in public funds on carbon capture and hydrogen projects, mostly for private fossil fuel companies, over the past 40 years, a new report from Oil Change International finds.

National governments are expected to spend an additional $115 billion to $240 billion in the coming decades, the report’s analysis shows. The United States, Norway, Canada and the Netherlands account for the bulk of this public spending, but it’s largely private companies that benefit…

Global CCS capacity is estimated at 65 million tons, 0.15% of 2023 emissions. But real figures are significantly less, as existing projects capture as little as 10% of their capacity.

“It is only a solution for the fossil fuel industry, not for people and the planet,” the report warns.

Existing projects fail to deliver on their promised output when extracting oil, and more than 80% of projects have failed to launch at all, despite receiving substantial public investment.
(Mongabay)

I’m not hypothetically opposed to carbon capture. If people can come up with a safe way to do it on the very large scale that would be necessary for it to make a real difference, great. I have yet to see even any meaningful glimmerings of that. And even then it would have to be run by elected governments. Not by the greedheads.

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