A windfarm near Velva, North Dakota. Two counties in the state have enacted drastic restrictions on new wind projects in an attempt to save coal mining jobs, despite protests from landowners who’d like to rent their land to wind energy companies.Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images
By Dan Charles, National Public Radio
North Dakota has lots of coal. It also has strong and consistent winds. It might be the perfect spot to showcase the long-awaited “energy transition” from climate-warming fossil fuels to climate-saving renewables.
Yet that transition has hit a snag. Two counties in the state have enacted drastic restrictions on new wind projects in an attempt to save coal mining jobs, despite protests from landowners who’d like to rent their land to wind energy companies. It’s a sign of how difficult that transition can be for communities that depend on coal for jobs and tax revenue. The economic benefits of wind power, even though substantial, often flow to different people.
The dispute erupted last year when Great River Energy, a rural electric cooperative based in Minnesota, announced that it planned to sell its Coal Creek Station, north of Bismarck, ND. If no buyer showed up, the company said it would shut the plant down in 2022. A coal mine that supplies the plant with fuel also would have to close. Roughly a thousand jobs would disappear.Article continues after sponsor message
“This has been a heart-breaking decision,” said David Saggau, the company’s CEO, speaking by video to the North Dakota Lignite Council, which represents North Dakota’s mining industry. Yet Saggua told the miners that he had little choice, because the coal plant couldn’t compete with cheaper electricity from other sources, mainly natural gas.
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That step cut the company’s losses, but it also opened up an intriguing new possibility. “We realized there was an opportunity right away,” says Beth Soholt, executive director of the Clean Grid Alliance, based in Minnesota.
The opportunity lay in a high-capacity transmission line that runs all the way from Coal Creek Station to Minneapolis. Closing Coal Creek would free up that line, sweeping aside one of the key roadblocks that have slowed the growth of wind energy in North Dakota.
“It’s no secret that one of the barriers to development is a lack of transmission capacity to move the wind- or solar-produced electricity from where it’s produced to where it needs to be used,” Soholt says.
Great River Energy, in fact, wanted to build huge wind farms around Coal Creek — a combined generating capacity of 800 megawatts — to take advantage of that transmission line.
That’s when Ladd Erickson stepped in. He’s the attorney for McClean County, North Dakota, where the coal plant is located, and he launched a battle over access to that power line. “The transmission line is everything,” he says. “It’s the golden goose.”
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