Business groups – including the chemical lobby – are in favor of carbon sequestration. The president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, Mark Denzler, says this can be done safely.

“We’ve already seen a project in Decatur that (Archer Daniels Midland) is working with the federal government that we have seen substantial carbon storage in the Decatur area,” said Denzler. “It’s important economically, because when we build these pipelines, it’s billions of dollars in economic development and hundreds or thousands of jobs across the state of Illinois.”

And Denzler says Illinois is a good place for this sort of project.

“The type of rock we have here is conducive to holding the carbon,” said Denzler. “It’s a pretty simple concept: the carbon came out of the ground, it was used in some kind of process, we’re capturing it, and we’re storing it back underground.”

Five states, including Illinois, want the federal EPA to speed up the permitting process. The others are New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia.