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Carbon capture pipeline company holds second round of public meetings

The carbon capture pipeline proposed to pass through Scott County would transport liquid carbon dioxide from ethanol plants in Cedar Rapids and Clinton.

DAVENPORT, Iowa — The Iowa Utilities Board and Wolf Carbon Solutions held a second public informational meeting for Scott County residents Tuesday night on the company's proposal to build a carbon capture pipeline.

The pipeline would transport carbon dioxide from ethanol plants in Cedar Rapids and Clinton and span about 280 miles across five Quad City area counties, according to a preliminary map of the project. 

The two groups held a meeting for landowners in late August but were asked to hold another after some landowners who thought they were in the pipeline's corridor said they weren't notified by mail about the meeting and questioned the legality of the process.

It's the third such pipeline proposed in less than a year in Iowa. Summit Carbon Solutions and Navigator CO2 Ventures both proposed larger pipelines that would cross over five states.

Since the first round of meetings, Nick Noppinger, Senior VP of Cooperate Development at Wolf Carbon Solutions, said the company has reached out to a broader group of landowners and has continued to "learn more on environmental integrity and operational safety" of the pipeline.

"This is a very new sector, CO2 pipelines," Noppinger said. "Everyone's getting up the learning curve. We actually have our own CO2 pipeline up north in Alberta, and so we have a lot of the learning curve already in terms of environmental and safety procedures, but we're continuing to learn that and the learnings that we have from those processes, we're relaying to the public."

The carbon capture pipelines are meant to help the ethanol industry remain viable as federal and state governments look to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

"We, as a global community, need to reduce our emissions," Noppinger said. "And CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) is a proven technology to do that."

The carbon capture pipelines proposed across Iowa have received opposition because Iowans are concerned companies will use eminent domain to seize land from unwilling landowners. Eminent domain is the power of the government to take private land for public use or benefit.

Wolf maintains that it wants to avoid using eminent domain and wants to do the entire project through voluntary easements.

Noppinger said once Wolf concludes with its IUB public meetings, it will begin right-of-way discussions and negotiations with landowners. He's hoping that will be in the beginning of next year in 2023. The plan is to have the pipeline operational in 2025.

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