On April 14, 2026, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 5 office issued the final Underground Injection Control (UIC) Class VI permit for the One Carbon Partnership (OCP) CCS project near Union City, Indiana — making it the first permitted carbon capture and storage project in the state. The permit was granted to a joint venture between Denver-based Vault 44.01 and Cardinal Ethanol, an Indiana-based ethanol producer located approximately 95 miles northeast of Indianapolis along the Indiana-Ohio border.
The One Carbon Partnership will capture CO₂ from Cardinal Ethanol's fermentation process — one of the purest and most cost-effective sources of industrial CO₂ — and permanently inject it into a deep saline aquifer beneath Randolph County. The project is designed to store up to 450,000 metric tons of CO₂ annually, with total pore space sufficient to safely inject approximately 13.5 million metric tons over 30 years of operation. Total capital investment in the project exceeds $60 million, and construction is expected to begin in 2026, with the facility targeting commercial operations by 2028.
The OCP project will support approximately 30 local jobs during construction and permanent positions during operations. Vault 44.01's CEO noted that Indiana's geology and the state's business environment make it an attractive location for CCS development, and that the company expects this permit to be the first of several in a Midwest CCS hub strategy.
The commercial case for the OCP project rests heavily on the Section 45Q tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides $85 per metric ton of CO₂ permanently stored in geological formations (and $180 per metric ton for direct air capture). For an ethanol-source CCS project capturing 450,000 t/yr, this translates to approximately $38 million in annual tax credits — representing a substantial portion of the project's revenue stream and making the economics attractive even before any carbon credit sales. The Class VI permit is a prerequisite for 45Q eligibility, making April 14's approval a significant financial milestone for the project.
Indiana's approval joins a growing Midwest CCS corridor that includes Illinois's Illinois Basin — Decatur Project, Iowa's Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline network, and Ohio's developing CCS programme. As EPA's Class VI permitting pipeline accelerates under current agency priorities, analysts expect the Midwest to emerge as a primary geography for ethanol-linked industrial CCS deployment through the late 2020s.
EPA's Class VI permit framework includes stringent monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) requirements for geological CO₂ storage sites. Permit holders must monitor subsurface CO₂ movement through seismic surveys and groundwater sampling, report injection volumes and reservoir pressure data quarterly, and maintain emergency response plans for potential leakage events. These requirements create a significant ongoing compliance burden — and an opportunity for digital monitoring platforms to automate data collection, validation, and reporting.
For carbon credit purposes, the MRV framework must satisfy not only EPA regulatory requirements but also the accounting standards of relevant carbon registries. Voluntary carbon credits from CCS projects issued under AVOIDANCE methodologies (e.g., avoided industrial emissions from ethanol CO₂ that would otherwise be vented) require independent verification of injection volumes, storage permanence, and additionality — an increasingly data-intensive process as credit buyers demand higher integrity documentation.
Industrial CCS is moving from demonstration to commercial scale, and the MRV requirements are scaling with it. The OCP project's 450,000 t/yr capacity will require continuous, auditable data flows to satisfy both 45Q compliance and voluntary carbon credit verification. At TrustVal, we see industrial CCS as one of the most significant application areas for our dMRV platform — combining IoT sensor integration for injection monitoring, satellite cross-referencing for surface deformation tracking, and automated reporting pipelines for both EPA and registry requirements. Projects that invest in robust dMRV infrastructure from the outset will be better positioned to access premium credit markets and maintain regulatory compliance as oversight intensifies through the 2020s.
Primary sources: Carbon Herald — First Indiana CCS Project Approved | Vault 44.01 Press Release via PRNewswire
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