However, the reality is that CCS:

• is a false climate solution.
• is way too expensive.
• will actually increase emissions.
• will be an environmental and public health disaster.

CCS poses huge risks to our health, our environment, and our safety. It will further enrich the fossil fuel industry and Wall Street investors while diverting resources away from real, cost-effective solutions like energy efficiency and renewable energy. 

Proposed CCS projects in Indiana:

At least 9 CCS projects are being developed in Indiana in these industries: hydrogen, steel, ethanol, ammonia, cement, diesel, and electricity. They are:

• Wabash Valley Resources in Vigo and Vermillion Counties
• BP Project Crossroads in Lake, White, Jasper, Newton, Pulaski, and Benton Counties
• Tenaska Hickory CCS Hub in Warren County
• Cardinal Ethanol and Vault 44.01 One Carbon Partnership in Randolph County
• Valero and Vault at the Vault-Linden Ethanol Plant in Montgomery County
• Heidelberg Materials in Lawrence County
• Duke Energy Indiana's Edwardsport IGCC coal gasification power plant in Knox County
• Cleveland-Cliffs in Lake and Porter Counties
• Iroquois Bio-Energy Company in Rensselaer County
• POET and Vault at Vault GSL - Aster in Madison County
• POET and Vault at Vault GSL – Beargrass in Wabash County

Scale of known carbon sequestration projects under consideration thus far:

• BP: 23 million tons per year
• Duke Energy Indiana: 3.6 million tons per year
• Cleveland-Cliffs: 2.8 million tons per year
• Heidelberg Materials: 2 million tons per year
• Wabash Valley Resources: 1.67 million tons per year
• One Carbon Partnership: 450,000 tons per year

A Class VI permit from the U.S. EPA is required to permanently sequester CO2 underground, which takes an approval period of about two years. 

• Wabash Valley Resources has obtained a permit. (The U.S. EPA issued a Draft Class VI injection permit in 2023, and they issued the final permit in January 2024, although that permit is under appeal before the Environmental Appeals Board.)
• Two ethanol CCS projects (One Carbon Partnership and Valero and Vault-Linden) have submitted Class VI permit applications
• No other CCS projects in Indiana have submitted EPA Class VI permit applications as of December 22, 2023.

For BP, CCS is directly tied to their “Hydrogen Hub” plans, which are being highly subsidized by our federal tax dollars. BP is leading the MachH2 Hydrogen Hub at the Whiting Refinery. They are planning a massive CO2 pipeline network and storage wells across six Northwest Indiana counties (listed above), and potentially extending into Illinois and Michigan, to store the CO2 made in the process of making hydrogen. They could also transport and store CO2 from other heavy industries in Northwest Indiana, such as steel. 

To understand the impact of the 45Q federal tax credit, consider BP’s planned CCS project in Northwest Indiana:

• 23 million tons per year CO2 sequestered
• 12 years of operation
• $85 per ton tax credit
• = $23.46 billion in federal government tax credits

Duke Energy and Heidelberg Materials have been awarded money from the U.S. DOE for Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) studies to evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of CCS at their facilities.

• Duke plans to evaluate the feasibility of capturing and storing CO2 from flue gases at the Edwardsport power plant in Knox County, Indiana.
• Heidelberg plans to evaluate the cost and performance of retrofitting a cement plant with carbon capture technology.

More than 25% of the nation’s primary steel is made in Northwest Indiana at three large integrated steel mills. Cleveland-Cliffs owns two of these facilities, and is the largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America.

• Indiana Harbor facility: located near the BP Whiting facility, which is part of the MachH2 Hydrogen Hub that BP is planning. Cleveland-Cliffs is currently building a hydrogen pipeline from their Blast Furnace No. 7 in the direction of the BP Whiting facility.
  
  • Blast Furnace No. 7 is the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
  • Presumably connecting to BP Whiting Refinery
  • Major purchaser of hydrogen from the MachH2 Hydrogen Hub (uses CCS).

• Burns Harbor facility: Applied for U.S. DOE funding for a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) Study for CCS.

The pursuit of CCS at these facilities is distracting Cleveland-Cliffs from making the investments they need to make to pursue steel manufacturing that would actually be sustainable. What that means is discussed in detail in the report that the ACEEE published on our behalf in August 2023: Sustainable Metals Manufacturing Opportunities in Indiana.

What is CCS?

CCS is carbon capture and sequestration, also sometimes referred to as carbon capture and storage. CO2 emissions are captured from industrial processes before they are released into the atmosphere. The carbon is then transported via pipeline to the injection well, where it will be injected into deep, underground geologic formations for "permanent" storage.

Industrial processes slated for CCS could include coal or gas power plants, steel mills, concrete plants, oil refineries, ethanol plants, and other fossil-fuel intensive heavy industries.

CCS includes three distinct stages:

• Capture - CO2 is removed from emissions either:
• Pre-combustion by converting the fuel to a gas mixture consisting of CO2 and hydrogen before it is burned.
• Post-combustion by separating the CO2 from the flue gas (the exhaust gas that is expelled from the smokestack) using a mixture of chemical solvents.
• Oxy-fuel combustion, which uses pure oxygen instead of air to combust fuel, resulting in a flue gas composed of CO2 and water vapor.

• Transport - Once CO2 is captured, it is compressed into a supercritical state (combining the properties of gasses and liquids), pressurized to approximately 2000 PSI, and transported by hazardous pipelines to the injection sites.

• Sequestration - The supercritical CO2 is injected into deep geologic formations, usually at least ¾ of a mile deep, to be "permanently" stored in areas where the geology is deemed "suitable," like depleted oil and gas reservoirs, coal beds, or deep saline aquifers.

Risks and Hazards of CCS

Each of the three stages of the CCS process create economic, environmental, and public health risks. 

Capturing CO2 requires significant amounts of energy. This can drive up the cost of energy for everyone and increase CO2 and other toxic emissions. Capturing CO2 is also extremely expensive, often requiring putting the public on the hook with financial support from local, state, and federal tax dollars through tax abatements, tax credits, taxpayer funded grants, and loan guarantees.

Transporting supercritical CO2 from where it is captured to where it will be stored also creates risks for local communities. A CO2 pipeline rupture in  Mississippi led to hundreds of people being evacuated and dozens sent to hospitals. First responders said that some of the victims exposed to CO2 looked like wandering zombies. Others were found unconscious. 

The Pipeline Safety Trust has an excellent resource, Carbon Dioxide Pipelines: Dangerous and Under-Regulated, that discusses the Mississippi incident and all of the risks associated with CO2 pipelines. 

Storing supercritical CO2 "indefinitely" poses numerous risks:

• Earthquakes

  The area in Indiana where multiple industries are attempting to dump their CO2 waste sits in the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone. The U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, is still attempting to determine whether carbon sequestration is safe, geologically speaking.

    

  Their preliminary findings show that the conditions in Indiana are similar to those in Oklahoma that led to hundreds of earthquakes after tens of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater from fracking were dumped underground.

   

  The strength of those earthquakes is expected to increase, as the underground dumping of fracking wastewater continues. Earthquakes have also occurred miles from the injection zones, indicating that the liquid toxic waste travels long distances underground.

   

  Check out this 2019 article by Tyler Sebree of ABC 57 in South Bend: The chance of a major earthquake in or near Indiana may surprise you.

• Asphyxiation and Stalled Vehicles

  CO2 is heavier than air. If released, it will pool in one area and displace oxygen, resulting in asphyxiation and/or death of animals and humans in the area.  

   

  Symptoms could also include:

  comas dizziness

  seizures arrhythmias

  elevated blood pressure brain and/or lung damage

   

  Since vehicles require oxygen for combustion, this would also result in vehicles stalling, which would make it impossible to use vehicles to evacuate the area or to get to injured people.

• CO2 migrating to the surface

  There are numerous abandoned mine shafts in the part of Indiana where multiple industries are attempting to dump their CO2 waste. These old mine shafts provide the CO2 easy access to the surface.

   

  In 2009, the Indiana DNR and the U.S. Geological Survey released a report entitled “The Occurrence and Mitigation of Carbon Dioxide in Homes Built on Reclaimed Coal Mines.” Their findings indicate that CO2 is already entering the basements of new construction homes on mined lands in Indiana. CCS is likely to exacerbate that problem, which could have deadly consequences.

• Water and soil contamination

  The release of CO2 into underground water or other waterways would result in contamination of our drinking water and the leaching of other contaminants, such as lead and mercury. The release of CO2 could cause damage to aquifers and the acidification of water, as well as damage to soil and crops.