Carbon Sequestration Pipeline: Debunking Claims of Landowners and Property Rights Advocates as "Anti-Ethanol."
By: Representative Jon Hansen, Chairman of the South Dakota House Judiciary Committee.
California, Washington, Oregon, and Canada are the real enemies of ethanol, not South Dakota landowners that David Owen falsely accused of being “anti-ethanol” in a recent column in The Dakota Scout. What’s more, if the ethanol industry bends the knee to the green new deal style energy policies of these places, then ethanol is assisting in its own demise.
In his column, David Owen of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce claims that people with concerns about the carbon sequestration pipeline are “anti-ethanol.” That’s absurd and absolutely false. However, this bogus assertion has been echoed by many pushing the pipeline and used as an attempt to discredit those who question the project.
Let’s examine who is really friend and who is foe of our region's ethanol industry.
As background, Summit Carbon Solutions wants to build a carbon sequestration pipeline across the Midwest. The company stands to make billions and billions of dollars in federal tax credits (more debt that our country can’t afford) for sequestering the liquified carbon underground via pipeline. The liquid carbon is dumped underground as waste and not used to produce any other good. In many cases when Summit Carbon Solutions has been denied permission from landowners to construct the pipeline across their land, the private, for-profit company is using the state power of eminent domain to condemn and use landowners’ land without their consent.
So are the people with concerns about the carbon sequestration pipeline “anti-ethanol” as Owen and the SD Chamber of Commerce claim? No. Most people I’ve spoken to with concerns about carbon pipeline safety and the use of eminent domain by this private company are farmers and landowners. These are the same farmers and landowners that have labored to grow the corn that made the ethanol industry possible in the first place. Some of them have invested their savings in local ethanol plants. Many have loyally ensured that only gas with ethanol is filled in their tanks. Many have bought distillers grains from ethanol plants for feeding their livestock. These farmers and landowners are part of the ethanol industry in many ways. They are as pro-ethanol as it gets. They are friends of ethanol. It’s absolutely wrong for anybody to call them “anti-ethanol.”
But what about the market regulators that Owen and the pipeline pushers say that we must appease in places like California, Washington, Oregon, Canada? Are they really friends of ethanol? Are they invested in the long term future and viability of the ethanol industry like our Midwest farmers and landowners are? Is ethanol really better off in the long term by trying to appease the demands of these leftist, climate crazed regulators? The answer to all those questions is simple: absolutely not.
The central claim made by Owen and other pushers of the carbon sequestration pipeline is that the pipeline is “essential to the viability of South Dakota’s ethanol industry” because “California, Washington, Oregon and Canada have established policies that pay a premium for low-carbon fuels . . . .” The claim concludes that ethanol “cannot sell to these markets without carbon sequestration enabled by these CO2 pipelines.”
Here’s the reality: California, Washington, Oregon, and Canada are the real enemies of ethanol, not South Dakota landowners that Owen and the South Dakota Chamber falsely accused of being “anti-ethanol.” If the ethanol industry kowtows to the green new deal style energy policies of these places, then ethanol is assisting in its own eventual demise.
By 2035–a mere 12 years from now—California, Washington, Oregon, and Canada all plan to completely eliminate the sale of vehicles powered solely by internal combustion engines. I know it can be hard to believe that states would actually pursue an absurd policy that would eliminate our primary method of travel—but it’s true. The goal of far-left, green new deal liberals is no longer about common sense development of renewable fuels like ethanol. Their goal is eliminating internal combustion powered engines and replacing them with electric motors. Ethanol, of course, powers internal combustion engines, and eliminating these engines from the new vehicle market would completely decimate the ethanol industry as we know it.
So, the same leftist climate regulators that Owen, the SD Chamber of Commerce, and Summit Carbon Solutions purport to appease by forcing this carbon sequestration pipeline on private property without the landowner’s consent are the same regulators who seek to ultimately destroy the ethanol industry. Appeasement and cooperation with radical left climate alarmist liberals is not the answer. They must be met with fierce resistance and opposition. Investors in the ethanol industry should demand resistance–not appeasement–to policies that will ultimately ruin their investment.
Resistance to the radical left’s climate agenda is pro-ethanol. Appeasement of liberals who want to destroy the ethanol market as we know it is not. Satisfying the demands of the liberal regulators and their arbitrary carbon scores will never be enough. As my friend Rep. Odenbach once remarked on the floor of the South Dakota House of Representatives, “progressives will keep progressing until they are stopped.” The progressive climate activists won’t stop with setting arbitrary carbon scores. They won’t be satisfied until internal combustion engines are eliminated and the ethanol market is decimated. They must not be appeased–they must be stopped.
California has set a “2035 target for ending sales of new internal-combustion engine passenger vehicles.” A 2022 California Air Resources Board rule “establishes a year-by-year roadmap so that by 2035 100% of new cars and light trucks sold in California will be zero-emission vehicles.” Without vehicles running on internal combustion engines fueled by ethanol in California, the ethanol industry there would be destroyed.
In Washington, “the Legislature passed the Motor Vehicle Emission Standards – Zero-Emission Vehicles law which directs Washington to adopt California’s vehicle emission standards. This includes new requirements to gradually increase the number of new zero-emission vehicles sold in Washington, until all new vehicles meet the ZEV standard starting in 2035.”
Under Washington’s regulations, the sale of a new ethanol powered internal combustion engine would only be legal after 2035 if it also has an electric engine with a minimum 50 mile range. Washington’s regulations will be absolutely devastating to the region’s ethanol market.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality—similar to California and Washington— recently adopted the “Advanced Clean Cars II regulation.” “This rule requires auto manufacturers to produce and deliver for sale increasing percentages of new zero emission light-duty vehicles. By 2035, all new passenger cars, SUVs, and light-duty pickup trucks must either be battery electric or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.”
Like California and Washington, Oregon is committed to completely decimating the ethanol industry by eliminating the sale of new internal combustion engine only vehicles by 2035.
Then there’s Canada. In 2022, Canada announced proposed regulations that “would supplement the emission standards by adding requirements for manufacturers and importers to meet annual zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) sales targets. These would begin for the 2026 model year, with a requirement that at least 20 percent of new light-duty vehicles offered for sale be ZEVs, and would increase annually to at least 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent for 2035.”
When these regulations are adopted in Canada, it starts a ticking time bomb for ethanol. In just 12 years, the entire country of Canada would ban the sale of vehicles that only run on ethanol powered internal combustion engines and virtually eliminate any viable ethanol market across the entire country.
These markets and their regulators are the true enemies of ethanol. It would be bad enough just for ethanol to be going along with its enemy as its enemy slowly coxes ethanol to its own grave. But what’s worse is that the pipeline pushers are simultaneously trampling on the property rights of the Midwest farmers and landowners who have been the most loyal supporters of ethanol since its inception. Kowtowing to the same regulators who seek to destroy ethanol while abusing pro-ethanol farmers and landowners by taking their land without consent through the power eminent domain is a terrible thing to do.
Ethanol should stand with the farmers and landowners who helped create the industry rather than trample on their property rights while playing along with leftist market regulators who will ultimately kill the ethanol industry itself. If ethanol chooses the wrong side, it won’t be liquefied carbon getting buried, it will be the ethanol industry itself, and all its investors along with it.
Representative Jon Hansen
South Dakota House of Representatives
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
Quoted sources by state:
California:
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/california-moves-accelerate-100-new-zero-emission-vehicle-sales-2035
Washington:
https://ecology.wa.gov/Air-Climate/Reducing-Greenhouse-Gas-Emissions/ZEV
Oregon:
Canada: