Besides the fact that he seems to be lobbying for the State of Iowa at the detriment of South Dakotans, why is he presenting this to the Minnehaha CC?
REGULAR BUSINESS:
10) Briefing on the Summit Carbon Solutions Pipeline – Dan Lederman
A MC Commissioner I talked with has NO idea what Iowa Dan will be presenting, but he has a pretty good guess;
Summit Carbon Solutions, the Alden company owned by Bruce Rastetter’s Summit Agricultural Group, proposes building a 710-mile underground pipeline that would extend into or through 30 of the state’s 99 counties.
Summit plans to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol and other industrial agricultural plants before they’re released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. The company will compress the emissions into a liquid so it can be transported to North Dakota, where it will be injected in underground rock formations for permanent storage.
So how do you get this crud to North Dakota? Well, you would most likely have to build a pipeline from Iowa through South Dakota. Bring in Iowa Dan.
The company says it has agreements to sequester carbon emissions from 31 Midwestern ethanol plants. In addition to Iowa — the nation’s largest producer of ethanol — Summit Carbon plans to run the pipeline into Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota.
While some would argue this is a great idea I have an even better one, stop using fossil fuels and ethanol and invest in clean energy. The technology already exists where you could run most if not all autos, trucks, semis and trains on electric and they are working on the technology for airplanes also. The electricity could come from investing in wind, solar, hydro and even nuclear energy. We don’t need to make more bio fuels which I have argued takes food out of hungry mouths and doesn’t produce enough return on energy. Ethanol is a big scam, always has been.
But I still wonder why the Chair of the SD GOP is promoting an Iowa business that is interested in running a hazardous waste pipeline through our state. I have argued for a long time that South Dakota Republican lawmakers are consistently working against the interests of hard working residents and baffled why they keep getting elected and now the leader of that party in South Dakota is proving that once again.