Farmers, Ranchers, Landowners Launch New Campaign Urging Lawmakers: “Stop the Carbon Capture Giveaways”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 8, 2025

Farmers, Ranchers, Landowners Launch New Campaign Urging Lawmakers: “Stop the Carbon Capture Giveaways”

New Billboard and Digital Push Comes Amidst Debate on Carbon Capture Tax Credits in D.C. Budget Bill

Above: One of the campaign billboards in South Dakota

Washington—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 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. 

Above: Sample of the digital ads running in South Dakota

Above: Digital ads link to this Bold Alliance petition  

About South Dakota Easement Team:
The South Dakota Easement Team landowners’ legal co-op works to educate landowners and to support organizing those who are opposed to eminent domain for private gain, and works with attorneys to file landowner legal challenges to proposed pipeline projects, and lawsuits and appeals including constitutional challenges and condemnation litigation. (https://sdeasement.org) 

About Bold Alliance:
The Bold Alliance is a network of “small and mighty” groups in rural states working to protect land and water. We fight fossil fuel projects, protect landowners against eminent domain abuse, and work for clean energy solutions while building an engaged base of citizens who care about the land, water, and climate change. (https://boldalliance.org)

About Food & Water Watch:
Food & Water Watch is a national nonprofit that mobilizes people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people’s health, communities and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests. (https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org)

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