But How Does It Walk?
How do big carbon sequestration companies make money by transporting and burying a non-product underground?
One friend at the grocery store exclaimed how great and convenient boneless chicken is. The other friend asked, “But how did it walk?”
How Do They Make Money Burying the Product Underground?
A December 2021 article in AG Week explains how Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions, which is behind the $4.5 billion Midwest Carbon Express project, plans to make money. The project will use eminent domain to criss cross the midwest with pipelines running through private land. Those pipelines will send CO2 waste from ethanol plants to North Dakota to store it underground for years.
According to Jake Ketzner, vice president of governmental affairs with Summit Carbon, Summit is paying for all of the up-front costs of construction. He explained how the company will recoup its investments:
• Ethanol plants will charge a premium price for being able to sell their ethanol on the low-carbon fuel market. Summit will take a portion of their premium sale price secured by long-term agreements with the plants.
• A federal program, expanded recently under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, will pay the company $85 per ton of CO2 stored underground for 12 years. A previous calculation based on $50 per ton would have yielded about $600 million. According to Ketzner, that tax incentive would provide about 20% of the company’s revenue. The new rate of taxpayer largesse may increase that significantly.
Comment
The low-carbon fuel market is manufactured by government fiat. Take away the “low carbon footprint” mandates based upon political-not-actual science, and there is no reason for a Carbon Sequestration Industry.
Is “carbon capture” really about the environment? Nature laughs at human mandates.
"Large amounts of volcanic gas — primarily water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) — are continuously released during eruptions of Kilauea volcano." — U.S. Geological Survey