Politics
What Is Carbon Capture? A New State Law Puts Much-Anticipated and Controversial Plans on Hold — For Now
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs a bill to pause then further regulate carbon capture technology in Illinois. (Credit: Illinois.gov)
With the stroke of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s pen, carbon capture and sequestration projects in Illinois are under a potential two-year moratorium.
Carbon capture and sequestration, known as CCS, is a technology that prompts both eager anticipation and environmental anxiety. In an effort to keep the skies from getting further polluted with carbon dioxide, a driver of human-caused climate change, CCS traps the CO2 byproduct created by things like ethanol production. The CO2 is then converted into a pressurized, liquid form and sent through a pipeline to sequestration wells far underground.
It’s a technology that’s been eyed by energy producers in Illinois for years, with multiple previous proposals and one that’s expected to resurface soon. And it’s a technology that landowners and environmentalists view with concern at best and fear at worst.
“Pipelines have been built in this country for years,” said Steven Kelly, CEO of One Earth Energy. “There’s over 5,200 miles of CCS pipeline in the United States. We’ve had one or two instances that everybody wants to bring up. The unions are confident that their labor groups are qualified to build this pipeline and that it can operate safely for many, many years.”
But One Earth’s proposal to transport CO2 and bury it underground has left some neighbors queasy. While CCS in Illinois is on hold temporarily, the technology will again be under consideration when the moratorium lapses or once further federal rules are in place, subject to additional state regulations created by the new law.
“I feel that it’s quite unsafe,” said Sally Lasser, who lives just outside Gibson City on a farm originally purchased by her dad in the late 1990s. “All of the science that they’re providing is on speculation, and I don’t feel they can make the promises that they’re making. … I think there’s too many unknown things that can happen.”
A Changing Industry and New Incentives
The idea of sequestering carbon dioxide underground isn’t new — but the climate change-conscious application largely is.
“It’s been used at a relatively small scale, and almost all of that has been used to extract more oil from tapped-out reservoirs,” said Jenny Cassel, senior attorney with Earthjustice. Cassel said the interest in expanding CCS in Illinois and elsewhere is being bolstered by tax incentives in the federal Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022.
“The type of expansion that’s being looked at … truly dwarfs what’s been in place so far,” Cassel said.
One Earth’s proposal calls for building a six-mile pipeline from its ethanol plant in Gibson City, about 40 miles east of Bloomington, to two injection wells in nearby McLean County.
Kelly said One Earth got interested in CCS as it looked to decarbonize its product, which had once primarily been used in gasoline, in an effort to create “sustainable aviation fuel.” And he said it’s a way to be “better stewards” of the planet.
“Everything that we’ve thrown into the atmosphere from a carbon standpoint hasn’t been the best, and we don’t have to look too far to understand the weather events that are occurring across the United States,” Kelly said. “Whether we want to believe this or not, we’re all affected by it.”
But for environmental advocates, CCS has potential perils at each step of the process. Cassel said those include the energy and water used in the capture process. There are also fears about pipeline safety and possible ruptures, especially for pipes running through populated areas. Compressed carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so it stays low to the ground and can spread depending on wind conditions.
“It can displace air so folks can’t breathe, animals can’t breathe,” Cassel said. “Cars that are relying on combustion engines that depend on, of course, burning oxygen … don’t have enough oxygen to run — so those cars, or ambulances as the case may be, stop working. And you can’t smell it, you can’t see it.”
Given that pipelines would be traveling through rural areas, some neighbors worry how they’d be notified in the event of a leak while they’re out working the land.
“Sometimes I’m in the truck, sometimes I’m on a four-wheeler, sometimes I’m on a tractor or a mower,” Lasser said. “I don’t always take my phone with me because I don’t want it to vibrate out of my pocket, I don’t want to sit on it, I don’t want to necessarily have it around big equipment for the chance of it getting smashed.”
CCS supporters point out that there are already more than 5,000 miles of CO2 pipeline operating in the U.S. Critics point to the potentially devastating effects of a single failure, with a February 2020 rupture in Mississippi that forced the evacuation of hundreds of people and sent at least 45 to the hospital as a prime example. Another CO2 pipeline leaked this past April in Louisiana.
In addition to the dangers of a rupture, the One Earth proposal has gotten pushback because of the sequestration wells’ proximity to the Mahomet Aquifer, the main source of drinking water for hundreds of thousands of central Illinoisans. Advocates and neighbors fear carbon eventually seeping out of the wells, especially in the case of a seismic event.
Bloomington resident Julie Prandi called protecting the aquifer a “bipartisan issue.”
“I have a good friend who happens to be Republican. … We often think that issues like this are for Democrats, and Republicans are not going to support it,” Prandi said. “But the issue of clean water for communities, everybody supports that. She saw this sign — ‘Protect the Mahomet Aquifer’ — in my front yard, and she said, ‘I want one of those.’”
One Earth’s Kelly said the geologists who have analyzed the plan for his company were confident the wells were several miles from the aquifer.
“We feel confident that we’re just not close to it,” Kelly said. “It’s not an issue. The geologist had indicated to us early on to go as far west as you can away from that aquifer, and that’s what we did.”
Additionally, one of the provisions of the new law is aimed at ensuring clean drinking water in the event of a catastrophe.
“If anything goes wrong, the company is on the hook,” Cassel said. “There’s a mandate that replacement water be provided if groundwater monitoring shows contamination, insurance has to be there in case there’s damage or harm.”
Cassel added that in General Assembly committee hearings on the issue of CCS, many lawmakers expressed concern about the aquifer.
“Knowing the depth of concern that was expressed by those legislators,” Cassel said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if that topic comes back up as we continue to see how CCS plays out in Illinois.”
Lengthy Negotiations and a Look Ahead
Those lawmakers, along with industry representatives, environmentalists and other stakeholders, were part of a lengthy negotiation process — about two years all told, with the governor’s office playing a key role in bringing disparate interests together.
“We wanted to make sure that we put in place sensible and smart regulations that will allow industry to flourish (and) so we knew what the guidelines were moving forward,” said Mark Denzler, president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and a part of the Capture Jobs Now coalition. “(From) the federal government and the Biden administration, there’s a lot of incentives that are out there that we want to make sure companies have access to.”
Denzler said some of the key protections include first responder training, liability insurance and monitoring — as well as landowner protections, ensuring that 75% of property a pipeline will pass over has to have consent from the owner to minimize the use of eminent domain. He sees the CCS compromise as a way to create jobs for Illinoisans.
“We’ve seen Indiana already move forward, we’ve seen some other states move forward, and so Illinois really risked losing out if we didn’t get this done,” Denzler said.
At the bill signing earlier this month, Pritzker echoed that message.
“This bill adds carbon capture to the growing list of new and burgeoning industries being built right here in our state,” Pritzker said.
The bill’s two-year moratorium is aimed at giving the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration time to issue final rules governing CO2 pipelines. The moratorium will lapse either in July 2026 or when the PHMSA rules are released.
But once those rules are in place, CCS projects will still face further hurdles. They’ll need signoff from three-quarters of landowners affected by pipelines, county-level zoning approval for pipeline routes, signoff from the Illinois Commerce Commission, and EPA approval for sequestration wells.
The One Earth project had already been facing setbacks, including a denied permit in McLean County and a recommendation from ICC staff that the commission reject the proposal. But One Earth’s Kelly is confident that with the new state law in place and with the expected final rule from PHMSA, his company’s project can move forward eventually.
“We’ve come this far,” Kelly said. “I’d be proud that this could be part of our legacy.”
While One Earth’s parent company has other ethanol interests, Kelly said the idea that its CCS pipeline footprint could expand massively isn’t on his radar.
“We’ve been challenged in a lot of meetings about that,” Kelly said. “This is a fairly capital-intensive industry. To think that you can just build several hundred miles of pipeline — it’s just cost-prohibitive.”
Despite the safety measures in place and the temporary pause in the approval process, CCS technology is still likely to spark concern for some central Illinoisans.
“This is what the companies always say — they’re gonna protect you, right?” Prandi said. “You can monitor it all you want, but once it leaks, there’s really nothing you can do.”