This month, groups representing farmers, ranchers, and landowners across the Midwest launched a new campaign aimed at congressional lawmakers, including those in two midwestern states at the epicenter of the fight over the carbon capture industry, Iowa and South Dakota. The effort, which features digital and billboard ads, is also targeting members of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees, urging them to end wasteful carbon capture tax credits (45Q) as lawmakers debate a path forward on the upcoming budget bill.
“The 45Q tax credit is a blatant example of corporate welfare, plain and simple. Because of the billions of dollars in tax credits, South Dakotans have had to put up with greedy, bullying corporations for over four years,” said Ed Fischbach, an impacted South Dakota landowner and member of the South Dakota Easement Team landowners legal co-op. “Carbon Capture and Sequestration is a failed and unproven technology that leaves taxpayers holding the bag. Congress needs to say no to the corporate interests driving this hand out and say no to the 45Q tax program!”
Driving much of the debate over tax credits are landowner concerns about pipeline operators abusing eminent domain as they attempt to build thousands of miles of dangerous pipelines through communities, which fiscal conservatives fear will contribute hundreds of billions of dollars to federal deficits.
“Farmers and ranchers across the Midwest are facing eminent domain seizure of their land for dangerous carbon pipelines and “carbon capture” projects that threaten their both livelihoods and their very lives, all paid for by the 45Q federal tax credit giveaway,” said Mark Hefflinger, Communications Director for Bold Alliance. “We are demanding that our representatives in Congress stop the carbon capture land grab boondoggle, and get rid of the 45Q tax credit.”
The campaign coincides with debates in Congress about repealing various Biden-era subsidies and tax credits, including 45Q. Expanded as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, 45Q is a multibillion dollar subsidy for capturing carbon dioxide, most of which the industry uses to extract oil from old oil wells that are no longer producing. In many states, those sequestration wells and dangerous pipelines can be under or near homes, schools, and aquifers, and CCS projects infringe on private property rights. Carbon capture would not be profitable without massive tax credits.
“Across the country, folks from all walks of life, Democrats, Republicans and independents, are uniting to oppose these dangerous carbon capture tax credits. Lawmakers now face a clear choice: Protect our communities and clean water, or continue wasting taxpayer dollars on faulty projects that only benefit big corporations,” said Jim Walsh, Policy Director at Food & Water Watch. “Communities are paying attention and they’re demanding action.”
The campaign is currently featured on billboards in Aberdeen and Sioux Falls, SD and Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, IA sponsored by Bold Alliance. Digital ads from Bold and Food & Water Watch are working to further educate the public and lawmakers with information about the 45Q tax credit’s harm to landowners, farmers, and ranchers. The groups have also gathered more than 10,000 petition signatures calling on Congress to end the expanded tax credit in the forthcoming budget bill.