Pipelines and powerlines are not the same thing as windfarms and industrial scale solar installations. They should not be conflated.
Carbon collection pipelines have become an issue because the environmentalists think that they might solve the CO2 panic and permit the large scale use of coal into the future. They oppose anything that might make carbon sequestration work for the same reason that they oppose a nuclear waste repository.
The carbon collection pipelines from ethanol plants are a special case because the CO2 being emitted from those plants is a pure waste stream that is currently being vented into the atmosphere. CO2 emissions from coal plants are contaminated with myriad other chemical compounds from the coal. Carbon capture requires separation, and that is where most of the expense is incurred. This problem does not exist in ethanol plants.
The backers of the ethanol-based carbon capture pipelines think they can use the carbon as a feedstock for commercially valuable products. I’ll leave it to the chemical engineers to sort out the possibilities, but for the moment, think of dry ice and fire extinguishers as commonplace Harry Homeowner examples of CO2 based consumer products that you can buy off the shelf. The idea is to monetize a waste stream, which rational people usually think is a good thing.
The CO2 being vented from ethanol plants has one other major difference from CO2 from coal combustion. The carbon being released in ethanol production was taken up by the corn plant during the growing season. When an ethanol plant vents it, it is simply returning to the atmosphere the same CO2 that was there a few months earlier. When we burn coal, we are releasing geologically stored carbon. This is what the fuss is about; we are returning to the atmosphere carbon that has been geologically sequestered for millions of years. This is irrelevant to the carbon cycle over the short growing cycle of this year’s crop of corn.
Rational environmentalists should support carbon capture from ethanol plants. So should conservatives who usually think monetizing a waste stream is a good thing. But environmentalists hate modern production agriculture. They hate ethanol because it is a fuel extender for internal combustion engines, and the enviros’ goal is to eliminate the ICE. And environmentalists don’t want farm ground covered in crops; they want farm ground covered with wind and solar farms, or returned to buffalo ranges.
First off, CO2 does not cause global warming. 2nd, there is no free lunch. Without govt. carbon credit programs the economics does not support sequestration. Preparing CO2 for the pipeline requires lots of energy and water. Further, aside from dry ice, carbonation uses, etc., developing higher value chemical products from CO2 commercially is in its infacy and again, requires large amounts of energy. CO2 sequestration is a scam and a dead end.