Poet LLC, the world’s top corn-ethanol producer, is teaming up with a company proposing a massive carbon-capture and storage project in the US as it pushes to slash biofuel emissions and tap into demand for sustainable aviation fuel and other burgeoning markets.

Summit Carbon Solutions has agreed to ship carbon dioxide from 17 Poet facilities through its proposed pipeline in the heart of the Corn Belt, giving the project a total of 51 ethanol plants and raising total capital expenditures 45% to $8 billion, according to Summit. South Dakota-based Poet is banking on the project just months after a similar pipeline plan it was part of was scrapped amid regulatory obstacles and opposition from landowners.

Summit faces those hurdles too and has had to push back the expected start of its pipeline. At the same time, trapping emissions from corn ethanol production is crucial for an agriculture industry that must shrink its carbon footprint to take part in fast developing markets for lower-emitting liquid fuels, as well as fight off the existential threat of electric vehicles. 

“The big winner in this is the American farmer,” Bruce Rastetter, founder and executive chairman of Summit Carbon’s parent, Summit Agricultural Group, said in an interview. “This pipeline project will allow ethanol to decarbonize and create new markets for farmers whose corn has now gone below the cost of production.” 

Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, is a major potential boon for corn farmers and producers of ethanol —  an octane booster and oxygenate that’s blended into US gasoline. But corn-based ethanol is just one of many ways to make SAF, adding pressure for the industry to cut climate-harming greenhouse gases so it can qualify as an ingredient under federal rules. 

Last week, as the world’s first ethanol-to-jet fuel plant formally opened in the US state of Georgia, farmers and renewable fuel groups in Iowa, the top US corn producer, decried lack progress in making their product more climate friendly. 

Of the 17 Poet plants, five are in South Dakota and will be included in Summit’s upcoming new permit application in the state after being denied by regulators last year amid concerns about safety and damage to farmland. The other twelve Poet plants are in Iowa, where regulators are currently deliberating a decision on the pipeline. 

Poet previously was part of the now scrapped Navigator CO2’s pipeline proposal. Other partners included fuel producer Valero Energy Corp., which has said it is weighing its options for an alternative plan. Rastetter has previously said he’d welcome all plants of the abandoned project.