A man speaking at the Minnesota Carbon Capture ForumEnergy, environmental, labor, and policy leaders recently hosted the Minnesota Carbon Capture Forum to inform and educate a diverse audience about the economic and environmental opportunities for the technology in the state. Below you will find audio of the event as well as other resources on how Minnesota and other US states can capitalize on this decades-tested technology. 

Three takeaways:

  • Event showcased real-world commercial experience in the US and the potential for deployment in Minnesota to drastically reduce emissions from industries such as ethanol, refining, steel, and electric power.
  • For states with a strong industrial sector, like Minnesota, carbon capture is currently the only viable way to reduce emissions on the timeline needed while maintaining a strong economic and jobs base.
  • Event was co-hosted by Center for Energy and Environment, Conservation Minnesota, Fresh Energy, Laborers’ International Union of North America, and Great Plains Institute.

Resources available:

Authoritative analysis shows that carbon capture and storage is a critical element to meet mid-century emissions reductions and more US states are working to position their region to deploy the technology. The Minnesota Carbon Capture Forum provided an overview of carbon capture, including policies, incentives, and current projects underway and in development in the US and abroad.

Hosted by a diverse group of supporters of the technology, the forum illustrated the necessity of carbon capture, especially in places like Minnesota where it is currently the only viable way to reduce industrial emissions on the timeline needed while maintaining a strong economic and jobs base.

You can hear audio from the impressive line-up of speakers who are leading the way for carbon capture by scrolling below or going to SoundCloud. For more information on how carbon capture can help your state meet ambitious climate goals and maintain economic prosperity, please contact Patrice Lahlum at [email protected].

Forum Agenda and Speakers:

The event was sponsored by Stoel Rives.

Event Audio and PowerPoints

Welcome Remarks
Commissioner Steve Kelley, Minnesota Department of Commerce

“When labor, environmental community and industry come together to address climate, we are creating an alliance that can make real change happen. Commerce is here to offer what we can to help with that change. We hope that everyone here will bring us their collaborative ideas about what we can do and will work with us to make our industries more productive, to make our air and lands cleaner and to make our workforce even stronger than it is today.”

US Overview
Jessie Stolark, Public Policy and Member Relations Manager, Carbon Capture Coalition
PowerPoint Slides 3-15

“The core mission of the Carbon Capture Coalition is to seek economy-wide deployment of carbon capture because doing so will achieve three things. The first is reduce emissions, the second to support domestic energy production, and the third is protect and expand a high wage job space.”

Minnesota Perspective
Michael Noble, Executive Director, Fresh Energy

“Our climate action challenge is very, very large. We need all of the tools in the toolbox essentially to eliminate the carbon footprint of the world’s economy.”

“I was a deep skeptic about this for about a decade, and I just kept studying it, and I kept learning about it, and I kept thinking about it, and so did our staff. And what we want to say to you is ‘all hands on deck.’ It’s a tool in the toolbox. We’re moving to a world without a carbon footprint, wind and solar, and bio-based energy and hydro is going to be the vast majority of our electric supply in America. There’s no question about it, but these are, these are special technologies and special innovation for the especially hard problem of getting from mostly-decarbonized to completely-decarbonized. We need these technologies and we need your support.”

Industry Perspective
Laurel Harmon, Vice President, Government Relations, LanzaTech
PowerPoint slides 18-31

“It is not science fiction. You’re looking at here, the first commercial plant, the first commercial implementation of this technology is operating in China directly taking steel mill emissions, fermenting it, producing ethanol, which is going into road transport fuel, just as ethanol is used in the US. That plant has already captured over 60,000 tons of CO2 and it’s produced over 12 million gallons of ethanol from steel mill emissions.”

Stakeholder Panel

Moderated by Brad Crabtree, Vice President, Carbon Management, Great Plains Institute

“These hard to abate carbon-intensive sectors—that have arguably been neglected compared to power in generation in terms of addressing climate change—they also happen to be where many of the best high-wage blue collar jobs in our economy remain. So not only do we have a real need and obligation to deploy carbon capture and other technologies to manage carbon in those sectors, we also have to do so from a social inequity standpoint. We have to support this jobs base.”

Jessica Looman, Executive Director, Minnesota State Building and Construction Trades Council

“When we talk about transition, and talk about change, and talk about movement, these workers are incredibly flexible and innovative. We embrace technology. It’s something that we feel very strongly about. But the way that we’re thinking about this is there needs to be a plan. The plan needs to take into account workers and it needs to benefit our communities, our workplaces, and our economy as a whole.”

Keith Tracey, President, CornerPost CO2
PowerPoint slides 33-43

“When people ask the question of ‘Can you do carbon capture off of industrial sources, fertilizer, ethanol plants?,’ the answer is yes. And we’ve proven it. We’ve been doing it for over 10 years. We also built about 250 miles of CO2 pipeline. And so that can be done, whether it’s done by a really large company or by really small companies.”

Al Collins, Vice President for Public Policy, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures
Slides not available due to proprietary concerns.

“We’ve got about 60 projects that we’re in negotiations with for capturing CO2 (across the US). Everything from coal fired power plants to ethanol plants, cement plants, steel plants, refineries, fertilizer, all of that. And we think it’s really important to demonstrate that you can capture CO2 from all these different types of industries. So in order to make this happen, we’ll we definitely need some help from the federal government and state government, but we think it’s doable and we love talking about it.”

David Greeson, Consultant, Minnkota Power Cooperative
Minnkota is developing Project Tundra, retrofitting a coal-powered power plant with carbon capture in North Dakota  
PowerPoint slides 45-51

“Project Tundra will capture about four million tons per year of CO2. Coincidentally, that’s about the equivalent of 800,000 over-the-road vehicles and that’s about how many there are in the state of North Dakota. So, we’ll be negating the carbon emissions from over-the-road vehicles in the entire state.”

Learn more about carbon capture opportunities for states on https://carboncaptureready.betterenergy.org and sign up for our monthly newsletter to find out about upcoming events and the latest news.

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