Carbon pipeline keeps growing, more ethanol plants joining Summit's portfolio

57 partners now on carbon sequestration company's roster after deal with Valero

More ethanol plants are joining a carbon sequestration pipeline planned to run through South Dakota.

Summit Carbon Solutions (Summit) announced Monday that Valero, a leading corn ethanol producer and fuel giant based in Texas, plans to funnel carbon emissions from eight of its plants into Summit's proposed pipeline.

The South Dakota plant joining the Summit project is Valero's Aurora Renewables Plant in Brookings County. The seven others are in Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota.

"By integrating Valero's facilities into this project, we will make major strides in providing more than a billion gallons of low-carbon fuels to a marketplace hungry for the product," said Bruce Rastetter, founder and executive chairman of Summit Agricultural Group.

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With the addition of the Valero plants, Summit's project now includes 57 ethanol production facilities across the Midwest. In January, 17 plants owned by POET were also added to Summit's portfolio, including eight in South Dakota.

According to Summit, 3.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide are expected to be captured from Valero’s eight facilities annually, while the pipeline will now carry more than 16 million tons of carbon dioxide each year to an underground storage site in North Dakota.

Both POET and Valero had been partners on a different carbon pipeline project abandoned by Navigator CO2 Ventures last year amid landowner opposition and regulatory setbacks in South Dakota and other states along its pipeline route.

Summit’s project has faced the same resistance.

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