Vicki Hulse and her son, Bill Hulse, oppose a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline near their home in Moville, Iowa.
Photographer: Dan Brouillette/BloombergThe Midwest Is Ground Zero for the Fight Over Carbon Capture Pipelines
The Biden administration is all-in on carbon capture and storage. But the pipelines needed to move the greenhouse gas around face stiff local opposition.
Deadly rupture. Groundwater contamination. Earthquake triggers. One after another, residents from across Iowa fired off their concerns at a meeting with federal and state representatives to discuss a technology that could help protect the climate — and reshape their backyards.
How to handle captured carbon dioxide dominated the agenda at a two-day meeting hosted by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) in Des Moines this spring. Communities that could one day host pipelines filled with CO2 were able to weigh in before regulators as the US begins to deploy carbon capture and storage technology in earnest. The climate solution, championed by President Joe Biden, didn’t get a warm welcome.