A company backed by BlackRock has abandoned plans to build a 1,300-mile pipeline across the US Midwest to collect and store carbon emissions from the corn ethanol industry following opposition from landowners and some environmental campaigners.
Navigator CO₂ on Friday said developing its carbon capture and storage (CCS) project called Heartland Greenway had been “challenging” because of the unpredictable nature of regulatory and government processes in South Dakota and Iowa.
Navigator’s project would have laid pipelines across five US states—South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois—to collect CO₂ from ethanol and fertilizer plants and pipe the gas to an underground storage site in Illinois.
Heartland Greenway is part of a wave of CCS projects aiming to tap into billions of dollars in tax breaks available under the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law signed by Biden last year.
The project faced opposition from local landowners, who expressed concerns about safety and property seizures, and some environmentalists who describe CO₂ pipelines as dangerous and a way to prop up the fossil fuels industry, which already has a network of such infrastructure.
Peter Findlay, analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said opposition by landowners and campaigners was a headwind for CCS pipeline projects, particularly given their length and the fact they cut across several states with different permitting regimes.
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