By Kim Chipman

Poet LLC, the world’s top corn-ethanol producer, is teaming up with a company proposing a massive carbon-capture and storage project in the U.S. as it pushes to slash biofuel emissions and tap into demand for sustainable aviation fuel and other burgeoning markets.

Summit Carbon Solutions has agreed to ship carbon dioxide from 17 Poet facilities through its proposed pipeline in the heart of the Corn Belt, giving the project a total of 51 ethanol plants and raising total capital expenditures 45% to $8 billion, according to Summit. South Dakota-based Poet is banking on the project just months after a similar pipeline plan it was part of was scrapped amid regulatory obstacles and opposition from landowners.

Summit faces those hurdles too and has had to push back the expected start of its pipeline. At the same time, trapping emissions from corn ethanol production is crucial for an agriculture industry that must shrink its carbon footprint to take part in fast developing markets for lower-emitting liquid fuels, as well as fight off the existential threat of electric vehicles. 

“This pipeline project will allow ethanol to decarbonize and create new markets for farmers whose corn has now gone below the cost of production,” Bruce Rastetter, founder and executive chairman of Summit Carbon’s parent, Summit Agricultural Group, said in an interview. 

One burgeoning new market is sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, which is poised to become a boon for corn farmers and ethanol producers. Yet the fuel, an octane booster and oxygenate blended into U.S. gasoline, is just one of many ways to make SAF, adding pressure for the industry to cut climate-harming greenhouse gases so it can effectively qualify to take advantage of government incentives in President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. 

Last week, as the world’s first ethanol-to-jet fuel plant formally opened in the U.S. state of Georgia, farmers and renewable fuel groups in Iowa decried lack progress in making their product more climate friendly. 

Iowa-based Summit is proposing to build the pipeline through five states — Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota — to carry 18.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. Ethanol from plants that feed into the pipeline could replace 25% of all U.S. aviation fuel with SAF, Rastetter said. 

Poet’s plants will add 380 miles (610 kilometers) to Summit’s planned pipeline, which is expected to start operating in early 2026, bringing total length to about 2,200 miles. 

Capturing and storing emissions will enable ethanol to further “clean up” gasoline while unlocking SAF and other markets, Poet President Jeff Lautt said in an interview. “This project just really put the exclamation point on that opportunity,” he said. 

Summit is in talks to sign up other agriculture and energy companies, Rastetter said. The pipeline is backed by investors including Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources Inc. and farm-equipment giant Deere & Co. 

Poet previously was part of the now scrapped Navigator CO2’s pipeline proposal. Other partners included fuel producer Valero Energy Corp., which has said it is weighing its options for an alternative plan. Rastetter has previously said he’d welcome all plants of the abandoned project. 

Summit is further along than Navigator was, Lautt said. 

“Tailwinds are starting to get behind this project,” he said. “Farmers have been doing a good job of getting engaged and understanding:  ‘Hey, if we don’t get behind this, what are we missing out on?’”

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