I’ve got a good friend that I discuss many things with who often ends our conversation by saying “society evolves” or “as society evolves”. The crux of the conversation always has to do with some particular issue and his argument is as society gets better and evolves many of these issues are worked out for the better. It’s usually a conversation stopper with me because it makes good sense but I’m always on the outlook for the opposite. When the small town of Dresden Ontario was rewarded with a casino about 20 years ago, I asked him if it was a case of “society devolving”. We both laughed. He knows that I’m not a big booster of gambling, albeit off the farm.

I was thinking about this a few times this past fall and winter as I was contacted by one of our DTN subscribers who farms in New Jersey. He sent along several supporting documents regarding the pipelines that are under consideration now in the American Midwest. The hope is to construct some of these pipelines to run pressurized carbon dioxide or CO2 from Midwestern ethanol plants to sequestering sites underneath the ground in North Dakota or Illinois. I must admit it took my head a little while to get it wrapped around on this. Putting pressurized carbon dioxide through a pipeline across American farm country to shove it under the ground isn’t top of mind. As far as I know it’s not done here.

It’s interesting stuff to consider. As farmers, we have become accustomed to a large segment of corn demand coming from its use in ethanol production. For instance, in the last USDA report 5.325 billion bushels of corn was being projected as going for ethanol production, out of a total usage a 14.835 billion bushels. As farmers we have become used to the narrative of ethanol being a clean burning fuel even after 15 or 16 years down the road from when the renewable fuel standard started in the United States. We also know that the by-product from using corn for ethanol the dry distillers grain is a very important additive to the livestock industry. In fact, both ethanol and dried distillers grain is exported around the world. I’m not necessarily going to say it’s been a win-win for grain and livestock farmers because there’s lots of diverse opinion, but it’s changed our agricultural economic landscape mostly for the good.

Those are the popular ethanol production by-products you hear all about. What you don’t hear as much about is the production of CO2 in that production process. Chemistry was never a big love of mine in my university days, but I do understand what CO2 is. On a tour of an Ontario ethanol plant in the not-too-distant past I saw where they were putting the CO2 by-product into canisters and selling those canisters to soft drink companies. In other words, the fizz in your drink is their courtesy of many corn growers across North America. It’s certainly better than releasing it into the air.

The idea of pressurizing CO2 and putting it through pipelines to sequester it under the earth had never occurred to me. However, it is a very big thing in the United States and the DTN subscriber was very concerned about pipelines running across his land as well as others throughout the American Midwest. Pipelines can be controversial, and this certainly seemed to add up to that. It’s the ultimate sequestration, pumping CO2 under the ground forever

As farmers we need to keep in mind that ethanol arrived here through a lot of taxpayer’s money. That is both here in Ontario and Quebec and in the United States. I have said before that the Ontario Ethanol Growth Fund was the most successful provincial farm program ever. So, you know what side of the argument that I am on. I thought of that as society evolving. As an extension, I thought of it as our agricultural economy evolving. However, I wonder now are the CO2 pipelines an example of our agricultural economy devolving? It might have something to do with the large tax credits in the United States that extend to these companies to sequester carbon underground.

These tax credits in the United States are approximately $31.77 per ton for geological sequestered CO2 and $20.22 per ton if used in oil recovery. It’s estimated that this would be worth about $400 million U.S. dollars to the three Iowa pipeline projects which would be permanently storing CO2 under the ground. Currently, in the American Midwest this is becoming quite a tussle. In Ontario and Quebec, I don’t expect anything to happen like this even with the Canadian carbon price of $50 per tonne. Pipelines are just too controversial especially in eastern Canada.

That will mean Canadian ethanol will have to adapt and change compared to their American cousins. At the same time, we are the biggest importer of American ethanol so by default we are maybe one reason why some of these pipelines are being proposed in the United States. It just goes to show that sometimes we might think society is evolving when in fact give it a little bit of time and it might be the opposite. All I know is that corn demand is still robust, and ethanol is a large part of that. There is so much more to the story.