The Carbon Gold Rush
Drilled
Pushkin Industries
4.6 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As his American company Summit Carbon Solutions struggles with backlash to a carbon capture pipeline linking corn ethanol plants across the Midwest, Bruce Rastetter is not slowing down. Instead, he’s celebrating some big wins for his Brazilian company, FS Fueling Sustainability, from new ethanol-friendly climate policy to government funding for their carbon capture project.
Pushkin+ subscribers can hear episodes early and ad-free. Find Pushkin+ on the Drilled show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.
Additional resources:
The link between corn ethanol and deforestation
Peer-reviewed research on the climate problems associated with corn ethanol
An explainer on BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration)
Reading list on enhanced oil recovery (EOR)
Read more about the Summit Pipeline project
Carbon Herald on the push to connect Midwest ethanol plants to carbon capture
Brazilian government document on technical mission to US midwest
Travel schedule of Brazilian government officials while in the Midwest
Read more about the explosion of corn ethanol in Brazil: https://drilled.media/news/ethanol-story1
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:04.0 | If you're struggling to keep up with all the latest innovations in tech |
| 0:07.2 | and what they'll mean for your life, |
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| 0:12.9 | on some of the biggest ideas in technology. |
| 0:15.4 | From AI and virtual reality to clean tech, |
| 0:18.5 | find TED Tech wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:27.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:33.6 | In early September,, a handful of Brazilian government officials headed to North Dakota on a mission. |
| 0:48.3 | It was a technical mission. They were there to see a shiny new green technology in action. |
| 0:55.3 | The idea behind this new technology was simple. |
| 0:58.6 | When you turn corn into ethanol, it generates carbon dioxide. |
| 1:03.3 | And that's a problem if you're trying to be a green fuel. |
| 1:06.9 | But now people from Iowa to North Dakota were capturing that carbon dioxide, storing it, |
| 1:13.6 | and selling it. |
| 1:15.6 | Never mind that they were selling it to people who would inject it underground to get more |
| 1:20.6 | oil out. |
| 1:21.6 | Some of it would surely still stay underground, and if you tilted your head and squinted a bit, that made it a climate solution. |
| 1:30.6 | The American company selling the Brazilians on this idea had a lot writing on these officials |
| 1:37.2 | believing that carbon capture connected to ethanol was a great green success story. |
... |
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