Summit Carbon Solutions will supply up to 670,000 MT/year of carbon dioxide (CO2) to electrofuels (e-fuels) producer Infinium for a proposed facility in North Dakota or South Dakota, the companies announced February 5.
As we detailed in Just a Little Bit Better, e-fuels are produced by using electricity to combine the hydrogen molecules from water with the carbon from CO2. The end result is an ultra-low-carbon fuel that can serve as a drop-in replacement for traditional fuels and also contribute to a reduction in net CO2 emissions. Infinium began operating its first commercial-scale facility in Corpus Christi, TX, in 2024 and another site in West Texas is under development.
Summit’s project, dubbed Midwest Carbon Express, would capture CO2 from ethanol plants (blue dots in map below) and other industrial sources in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. The CO2 would be aggregated and transported by pipeline to North Dakota, where it would be permanently sequestered in deep geologic formations.
The project took an important step forward in late 2024 when Summit received permits for three Class VI injection wells from the North Dakota Industrial Commission. The permits allow Summit to permanently store more than 350 million MT of CO₂ in geologic formations more than a mile underground. North Dakota is one of just four states — Louisiana, West Virginia, Wyoming are the others — with control over permitting for Class VI wells (see Take Control). The process is handled by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in all other states.
