With The Expansion of Carbon Capture Pipelines Come Safety Fears
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2023
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
Carbon capture is a way to suck up carbon dioxide pollution from ethanol plants, power plants and steel factories, and store it deep underground.
While the companies that build the pipelines say the technology will help the U.S. meet its greenhouse gas emissions goals, they have also run into problems.
In Iowa, farmers are pushing back against the pipelines crossing their land. And for a town in Mississippi, a CO2 pipeline endangered lives.
NPR's Julia Simon reports from Satartia, Mississippi on the aftermath of a pipeline rupture. The Climate Investigations Center obtained recordings of the 911 calls from Satartia and shared them with NPR.
Harvest Public Media's Katie Peikes also provided reporting in this episode.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 2 years ago, President Biden signed an executive order for the U.S. government to achieve net |
| 0:14.3 | zero emissions by 2050. |
| 0:16.7 | It's an economic imperative. |
| 0:19.0 | I think it's a moral imperative to future generations. |
| 0:22.2 | Since then, the Biden administration has continued to push for measures that would curb |
| 0:26.8 | greenhouse gas emissions and stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. |
| 0:32.2 | So it must also be a decisive decade for innovation, developing, demonstrating and commercializing |
| 0:39.4 | new clean energy technologies by 2030 so that they can be widely deployed in time to meet |
| 0:46.6 | our 2050 net zero goals. |
| 0:50.6 | Starting to the 2050 goal means doing things like developing more wind and solar power, |
| 0:57.6 | scaling up the number of electric vehicles on the roads and implementing carbon capture |
| 1:03.0 | technology. |
| 1:04.5 | In the Midwest, three companies say building major carbon capture pipelines could remove |
| 1:10.5 | gas from ethanol plants and store it deep underground. |
| 1:13.8 | We have the highest concentration of ethanol production. |
| 1:17.0 | Conti Shaw is executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fools Association. |
| 1:22.6 | The Biden administration is offering incentives for carbon dioxide removal, and Shaw says Iowa's |
| 1:28.6 | ethanol industry needs carbon pipelines to compete. |
| 1:32.5 | If Iowa screws this up, we're in big trouble. |
| 1:36.7 | We will absolutely lose a huge chunk of our industry and put the Iowa ag economy in a tail |
| 1:42.5 | spent. |
| 1:43.5 | The proposed pipeline routes could span six states from the Dakotas down to Illinois, |
... |
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