In the cornfields of the U.S. Midwest, a vast and controversial plan is quietly unfolding. A plan dressed in the language of climate salvation, yet loaded with risks, land-rights fights and unresolved questions. At the centre of that plan is the company Summit Carbon Solutions (SCS), proposing a multi-state pipeline network carrying CO₂ from ethanol plants to deep underground storage. On the surface it is framed as a win-win: farmers get income, ethanol gets “cleaner fuel” status, the climate gets less carbon. But dig deeper, and the story begins to fracture.
This article unpacks the problem: why carbon-capture pipelines like the one in development may be less climate hero and more infrastructure trap. We expose the landowner conflicts, regulatory risks, technical uncertainties and opportunity costs that make this project a textbook example of what deserves a “false solution” label.
Summit’s plan is ambitious. Called the “Midwest Carbon Express,” it proposes to collect carbon dioxide emissions from dozens of ethanol plants in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, spanning thousands of miles of pipeline, then funnel them into an underground storage site in western North Dakota. [Reuters]
SCS and its supporters sell this as a breakthrough. The ethanol industry is eager to reduce its carbon intensity. The federal tax credit known as 45Q makes capturing and storing CO₂ financially attractive. SCS claims the pipeline will deliver environmental, economic and farming benefits. [PipelineFighters]
For farmers it promises a new income stream via easements and payments for letting pipelines cross their land. For rural communities it promises jobs in construction and new markets for corn. The climate logic is simple: fewer emissions escape into the atmosphere, so the world is closer to decarbonising.
This is not about phasing out fossil fuels. It is about building massive infrastructure so that current ethanol plants, which depend on fossil-intensive agriculture and energy, can keep operating and claim “cleaner” credentials. It helps maintain the status quo.
Rather than focusing on demand reduction, energy efficiency or renewable alternatives, capital is being redirected toward prolonging the life of high-emission systems. That is a classic indicator of a false solution. The problem remains and the fix enables business as usual.
The cost of SCS’s project is staggering, with figures exceeding 8 to 9 billion dollars. The promised carbon reduction is ambitious but comes with caveats. An analysis by the Center for Rural Affairs noted the pipeline would aim to reduce roughly 12 to 15 million tonnes of CO₂ annually. [Center for Rural Affairs]
How reliable is that projection? How certain are capture rates, transport integrity, leak risk and storage permanence? A 2024 academic review of U.S. CO₂ pipelines concluded that risks of material failure and corrosion are significant, especially in the Midwest context. [JScholarship study]
The climate benefit may be overstated while the cost and risk are real.
One of the most striking battles is over land rights. SCS has filed hundreds of lawsuits to obtain access and easements. According to reporting by the Associated Press and others, SCS initiated 232 lawsuits across Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota, including 156 eminent domain actions in South Dakota alone. [Associated Press]
Landowners voice alarm: surprise surveying, legal pressure, loss of control of their property rights. In response, states have pushed back. South Dakota banned the use of eminent domain for CO₂ pipelines in March 2025. [Reuters] Iowa advanced legislation limiting such seizures. [South Dakota Searchlight]
The push-and-pull over land rights reveals this is not a benign climate project. It is contested infrastructure impacting real people.
The plan depends on permit approvals across multiple states, stable tax incentives and public support. The path has been bumpy. In April 2025 the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission ruled the proposed route was not viable and denied the permit. [South Dakota Searchlight]
Changes in legislation or in federal incentives could make the financial model collapse. A Summit attorney has stated the project would be reassessed if the tax credits are repealed. [Reuters]
The public is being asked to accept the risk of stranded assets or toxic debt.
CO₂ pipelines carry complex risks. The academic review cited above found that a large share of CO₂ pipeline incidents were due to corrosion and material failures. [JScholarship study]
A rupture of a CO₂ pipeline in Mississippi in 2020 led to dozens of hospitalisations and forced evacuations. [Oakland Institute]
Is the regulatory and oversight regime robust enough to manage this in farmland areas? Can farmland on the route remain productive? Past experience with trenching for large pipelines already shows crop yields dropping within the right-of-way for several years. [Axios]
Yet this project advances with little public discussion of the consequences for soil health and farm economics.
There is a slower but deeper cost. By focusing money, policy and politics on mega pipelines, simpler, faster and cheaper solutions are pushed aside. Energy conservation, switching to low-carbon fuels, localised renewables and improved farming practices often deliver more immediate and verifiable results. They lack the scale and spectacle of big engineering. They also threaten fewer rights.
The pipeline vision crowds out those alternatives and locks in dependence on existing high-emission industries. That is the essence of a false solution.
Amid the rhetoric of innovation and climate leadership, the people expected to host this infrastructure rarely get the spotlight. Consider farmer Jared Bossly in South Dakota. He was planting crops when a sheriff’s deputy arrived, summons in hand, because the pipeline company was moving to take his land for survey work. “They started the process of suing us to take our land,” he recalled. [Associated Press]
Or the many others who say they were told “we just need to survey your land” but were confronted by heavy machinery and legal filings. Communities with deep attachment to land, livelihoods bound up in soil and season, rights rooted in generations, are being asked to carry the burden of climate engineering without full consent, full information or full protection.
This pipeline project merits scepticism. It ticks many boxes of a false solution: high cost, infrastructure lock-in, unclear climate benefit, social risk and regulatory fragility. It serves more the business model of ethanol and pipeline companies than the climate or rural rights.
When a massive build-out is pushed, and when the communities in its path oppose or question it, the gloss of “green fix” must be stripped away and replaced with real scrutiny.
Infrastructure dreams can captivate. Long pipes carrying captured carbon, rural jobs, cornfields pumping into the climate solution. Dreams need grounding in reality. The story of Summit Carbon Solutions and the Midwest pipeline is a cautionary tale of how such “solutions” might end up serving legacy industries, exploiting landowners and consuming public trust without delivering the climate breakthrough promised.
If we are serious about climate justice and real transformation, we must ask harder questions. Whose land is this built on? Who bears the risk? Who benefits? And is this the best path forward, or just the most visible one?
For the farmers, for the rural communities, for the land itself, the answers matter. Climate action must be just, effective and democratic. Anything less risks becoming a giant distraction rather than a genuine solution.