The Iowa Capital Dispatch recently reported that “Income for Iowa farmers might decline $1.1 billion per year if the state’s ethanol plants are unable to capture and sequester their carbon dioxide with the help of proposed pipelines to transport it, according to a study commissioned by the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. The study — by Decision Innovation Solutions of Urbandale — predicts that three-quarters of ethanol production in Iowa would leave the state without the pipelines and that farmers could see a reduction in the prices they get for their corn of up to 75 cents per bushel.”

The study results were released “amid three pipeline proposals from companies that want to transport captured carbon dioxide from Iowa ethanol plants out of state for underground sequestration and other commercial uses. Those projects are threatened by pending legislation in the Iowa House that would impose new restrictions on them that would affect the companies’ ability to use eminent domain to force land easements and would allow counties to dictate where they can’t be built, among other provisions,” the Dispatch noted.

“I hope that it does not become law the way it is because it will kill these projects and have a very scarily large detrimental impact on our industry,” said Monte Shaw, the association’s executive director.

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