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Carbon Capture + Minnesota’s Carbon Free Future

 

At the convening “Carbon Capture and Minnesota’s ‘Carbon-Free’ Future,” CURE and other experts from Minnesota and throughout the U.S. came together for a timely and critical discussion about industry-driven carbon capture, CO2 pipelines, and the false promise of a “cleaner fossil fuel” future.

Since 2021, CURE has been at the forefront of the debates surrounding carbon capture and the related infrastructure build-out at the state and national levels. In early 2023, Minnesota passed the “100% Carbon-Free by 2040 Energy Standard,” and many in the climate community celebrated it as a crucial win on the path to net zero. Now, as we enter into the end of 2023, we will wrestle with the question of what “carbon-free” actually means for our state and world.

  • What technologies and facilities will be included, and what must be phased out entirely?
  • What resources will we use, and what must stay in the ground?
  • Who will benefit from the carbon-free transition, and who will bear the costs?

The specter and allure of carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS)—technologies that purport to capture, bury, or use some portion of the CO2 emitted from industrial sources and the most carbon-polluting industries—brings these questions to the fore. These are not just hypothetical questions in Minnesota, where we already have proposed projects and pipelines moving through the regulatory process, carbon-intensive industry lobbyists in legislative offices, and communities facing the impacts. But is there really any place for CCUS in a climate and environmentally just, carbon-free future?


PRESENTATIONS

The History of the Carbon Capture
Sarah Mooradian, CURE

 

Project Tundra: Trick or Treat? It’s still coal.
Jeremy Fisher, Sierra Club

 

Pan-Indigenous perspectives on climate mitigation and pathways to a “carbon-free” future
Michelle Montgomery, University of Washington
Patrick Freeland Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN)
Maryanna Harstad

 

CO2 Pipelines and the Carbon Industrial Complex
Maggie Schuppert, CURE

 

Risks of Carbon Capture + Ethanol
Carolyn Raffensberger, Science and Environmental Health Network

 

The Taxonomy of Carbon Capture for Climate Action
Dr. Emily Grubert, University of Notre Dame

Carbon Capture, Pipelines & Water
Peg Furshong, CURE

 

Carbon Capture, Pipelines & Water
Jeff Broberg, Minnesota Well Owners Organization

 

Public Forest Land as Carbon Wasteland
Hudson Kingston, CURE


RECORDING


Event Speakers:

JEFFREY BROBERG, Minnesota Well Owners Organization

Jeff Broberg is a Rochester-area professional geologist and consultant focused on natural resource, energy, water and land-use issues of the Upper Mississippi Valley. A Minneapolis native, Jeff and his wife Erica moved to Lafayette, Louisiana where he worked as a petroleum geologist specializing in deep and high pressure/high temperature petroleum prospects before coming back to Minnesota.

Jeff has been a leader and frequent contributor on natural resource and land-use issues in southeastern Minnesota for 25 years. He commits his free time to trout fishing, canoeing the Bluffland Rivers and Mississippi backwaters, and to nonprofit organizations including the Cascade Meadows Wetlands and Environmental Science Center, the Minnesota Trout Association, and the National Trout Center in Preston, and is a founding director of the Minnesota Well Owners Association.

DR. JEREMY FISHER, Senior Strategy and Technical Advisor, Sierra Club

Jeremy Fisher, Ph.D., joined Sierra Club in 2018, and works with Sierra Club’s litigation teams, campaign teams, and federal teams to develop new energy and climate policies, tun litigation, and build federal programs. He wears a lot of hats. Jeremy earned his doctorate in Geology at Brown University where he studied climate impacts on ecosystems from satellite data. After a postdoctoral career studying storm damage on forests, Jeremy stumbled into energy policy and never looked back. Prior to Sierra Club, Jeremy worked at Synapse Energy for a decade, where he provided expert analysis for state and federal regulators and had the opportunity to work with public advocates in electricity system matters in nearly every state. During his tenure as a consultant, Jeremy developed EPA’s Avoided Emissions and Generation Tool (AVERT), testified in litigated planning and rate cases around the country, and built planning and policy tools for public advocates.

PATRICK FREELAND, Project Director, Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN)

Honor, Pride, and Respect. These values serve as the foundation to a worldview of knowledge in plural – transdisciplinary understanding and holistic experience – in order to promote proactive change through community-based collaboration. Patrick Austin Freeland, Hvtvltvlke Mvskokvlke (Wind Clan, Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma) is a graduate of Haskell Indian Nations University and Purdue University, with studies focused on the interrelations of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Indigenous Peoples’ adaptation to climate change, and preservation of tribal and cultural sovereignty. Through commitment-to-action, Patrick centers his work ethic and civic engagement through intergenerational knowledge-sharing and through the utilization of interdisciplinary sciences, arts, and engineering, as a means to improve human and environmental health, social advancement, and intercultural understanding through reconciliation. Patrick’s research and professional development have centered on climate change adaptation and mitigation, noncognitive development in education, and advancement of plural knowledge and conscientiousness.

PEG FURSHONG, Programs Director, CURE

Peg Furshong joined CURE in August of 2012.  She provides a variety of program support across CURE’s work with a focus on constituent engagement, leading CURE’s Water Democracy program work, and organizing the carbon pipeline resistance on the ground in local communities and with landowners.  As an educator throughout most of her professional career, Peg has worked with young adults in higher education – facilitating programs in leadership, civic engagement, sustainability, and diversity. Born and raised in Montana, she came to Minnesota with a love for nature and the values of the natural world.  Peg holds a Master of Science degree in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in Information, Process & Communication (IPC) from Montana State University-Billings.

DR. EMILY GRUBERT, Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame

Dr. Emily Grubert is Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy Policy, and, concurrently, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on justice-oriented deep decarbonization and decision support tools related to large infrastructure systems, with emphasis on evaluation of dynamic life cycle socioenvironmental impacts and the effects of different value systems on decision pathways. Grubert holds a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from Stanford and previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Carbon Management at the US Department of Energy.

MARYANNA HARSTAD

Zhawanowikwe, Maryanna Harstad, is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and a descendent of the Blackfeet Nation. She worked for 30 years for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources as a planner, a forester, and a monitor on utility corridor projects. In 2021, as part of the Line 3 Water Walk, she traveled the length of that pipeline corridor as it was constructed across northern Minnesota from Lake Superior to North Dakota. She is an ordinary person who is trying to strengthen her knowledge of culture and traditions by learning Ojibwemowin, and practicing seasonal activities such as gathering wild rice, and making maple sugar.

HUDSON KINGSTON, Legal Director, CURE

Hudson Kingston, joined CURE in 2023 with a background in environmental law, public health law, and consumer protection. He brings experience partnering with tribes, local nonprofits, low-income advocates, environmental and social justice groups, and local/state/territorial/federal public employees. Over the course of his career, he has worked in both the Midwest and Washington D.C. on litigation and policy related to climate change, water pollution impacts of mining, pesticide regulation, the environmental and health impacts of e-cigarettes, public records and government transparency, and environmental injustices perpetuated by the administrative state. Hudson attended Carleton College, received his J.D. from the University of Iowa School of Law, as well as Master of Laws degrees in human rights and international law from New York University and the National University of Singapore. A born and raised Minnesotan, Hudson lives in the home his grandparents built in the woods outside Ely, MN, where he spends his free time baking bread, chopping down balsams, and running.

DR. MICHELLE MONTGOMERY, Associate Professor, University of Washington, Tacoma

Dr. Michelle Montgomery (enrolled Haliwa Saponi/descendant Eastern Band Cherokee) is an Associate Professor of American Indian Studies and Ethnic, Gender, and Labor Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She is also the Assistant Director for the Office of Undergraduate Education, and the Cohort Director for Muckleshoot Programs in the School of Education. Dr. Montgomery’s community engaged scholarship through the Indigenous Speaker Series focuses on Indigenizing and decolonizing the climate justice narrative, environmental ethics connected to Indigenous Peoples’ identities, and eco-critical race theory to eliminate racial and environmental oppression.

SARAH MOORADIAN, Government Relations & Policy Director, CURE

Sarah joined CURE in the fall of 2021. Sarah graduated from Vermont Law School with both a J.D. and a Master of Environmental Law and Policy. She is passionate about protecting the environment and believes that to successfully do so we must change our existing policies and attitudes about nature. Sarah has clerked for the Minnesota Court of Appeals and worked on projects concerning tribal rights and land management efforts, mining in northern Minnesota, and surface water use in New England. Sarah also holds degrees in sociology and journalism from the University of Minnesota. In her free time, Sarah likes bird watching, gardening, and spending time with friends and family.

CAROLYN RAFFENSPERGER, Executive Director, Science & Environmental Health Network

Carolyn Raffensperger is Executive Director of the Science and Environmental Health Network. In 1982, she left a career as an archaeologist in the Southwestern United States to join the environmental movement. As an environmental lawyer, she specializes in the fundamental changes in law and policy necessary to protect public health and the environment. She is best known for her work on the precautionary principle and developing a legal framework to assert the rights of future generations to a habitable planet. Carolyn is co-editor of Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy (2006) and Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle (1999).

MAGGIE SCHUPPERT, Campaigns Director, CURE

Maggie Schuppert joined CURE at the end of 2021 to help build CURE’s capacity for strategic communications, campaigns, and advocacy. Before moving to Minnesota in 2015, she lived in Washington D.C. and northern Thailand, working at the intersection of the human rights and environmental movements supporting communities that have been adversely impacted by large-scale energy and development infrastructure projects. Bringing this commitment to environmental rights, justice, and accountability to her organizing work in Minnesota, Maggie has built strong roots and relationships with MN’s environmental justice community which includes serving on the steering committee for the MN Frontline Community Protection coalition. Maggie has an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University, an MA from the University of Essex (UK), and a postgraduate certificate in Evaluation Studies from the University of Minnesota.

SARA WOLFF, Policy and Rural Democracy Team, CURE

Sara is a lawyer and climate policy strategist. She joined CURE in the summer of 2022 as a Minnesota Rural Democracy Project and Democracy and Climate Pledge Organizer.

Between 2017 and 2022, Sara served as the Advocacy Director at the Minnesota Environmental Partnership. There she worked with other coalitions on climate, energy, water, soil health, pollinator, mining, and transit issues. Sara previously worked as a policy assistant to Susan Gaertner at the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.

Sara grew up in Nebraska. She went to St. Olaf College where she met her husband Doug. Sara plays the cello, likes to sing in large groups, and enjoys cooking with her family.


Resources:

Carbon Capture + Minnesota’s “Carbon Free” Future | Resources [PDF]

  • Carbon Capture – What you need to know Part 1, CURE
  • CO2 Pipelines – What you need to know, CURE
  • Carbon Dioxide Pipeline Safety, Pipeline Safety Trust
  • Carbon Capture and Storage FAQs, Center for International Environmental Law
  • Carbon Capture – What you need to know Part 2, CURE
  • Confronting the Myth of Carbon-Free Fossil Fuels: Why Carbon Capture Is Not a Climate Solution, Center for International Environmental Law
  • “CCS – Carbon Capture and Storage: Fact or Fiction,” Panel Discussion w/ Maya Winkelstein of the 2030 Fund, Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown and Jane Patton of CIEL, AREDAY 2023
  • How Carbon Capture and Storage Projects Are Driving New Oil and Gas Extraction Globally, DeSmog
  • Fossil Fuel Companies Made Bold Promises to Capture Carbon. Here’s What Actually Happened. DeSmog
  • The carbon capture crux: Lessons learned, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
  • The good and bad of carbon capture w/ Emily Grubert, Catalyst Podcast
  • Carbon Capture and Storage, More Harm than Good? Parts 1-3, Just Solutions Collective
  • Project Tundra: DOE analysis says coal carbon capture project would emit more greenhouse gases than it stores, Energy and Policy Institute
  • Stop Giving Big Oil a Carbon Fig Leaf, Jonathan Foley, Project Drawdown

CO2 Pipelines

  • Carbon Dioxide Pipelines: Dangerous and Under-Regulated, Pipeline Safety Trust
  • The Great Carbon Boondoggle: Inside the Struggle to Stop Summit’s CO2 Pipeline, The Oakland Institute
  • The Gassing of Satartia, Huffington Post,
  • The U.S. is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story, NPR

Blue Hydrogen

  • Blue Hydrogen: Not Clean, Not Low Carbon, Not a Solution: Making Hydrogen from Natural Gas Makes No Sense, IEEFA
  • Fossils, Fertilizers, and False Solutions: How Laundering Fossil Fuels in Agrochemicals Puts the Climate and the Planet at Risk, CIEL
  • Howarth, RW, Jacobson, MZ. How green is blue hydrogen? Energy Sci Eng. 2021; 9: 1676–1687.

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