An Iowa-founded carbon-capture pipeline company, established by an agricultural business giant and Republican mega-donor. Its proposed route, more than 2,000 miles long, would collect and pipe carbon dioxide from ethanol plants through Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and South Dakota, ending in North Dakota for underground storage. Supporters say the pipeline will create construction jobs and help ethanol producers sell more fuel to low-carbon markets, in turn helping corn farmers.
In 2024 Iowa's utilities commission granted Summit a permit, giving it the right to use eminent domain to build the pipeline if the route has been approved in other states. The project qualifies for carbon-capture tax credits expanded during the Biden administration and extended by Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act to include credits for enhanced oil recovery. Summit has said the project could serve as a "critical CO2 supply artery" for American oil basins, including North Dakota's Bakken field.
The project has provoked a muddled alliance against it between liberal environmentalists, rural landowners and conservative Republicans. Some landowners and ethanol plants have agreed to the pipeline, but opponents cite safety concerns, often pointing to a separate case in Mississippi in which residents were poisoned after a carbon-capture pipeline ruptured. Summit says there have been no fatalities from such projects.
South Dakota has since banned eminent domain for carbon-capture pipelines, a potential roadblock to the project. In North Dakota a judge has revoked Summit's underground-storage permit for now.
If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches, they will take sandwiches. -- Lord Boyd-orr Eats first, morals after.