Legislators: Capture Opportunities in Coal
North Dakota lawmakers urged the coal industry to capitalize on emerging opportunities in carbon capture and critical minerals while defending baseload reliability against intermittent renewables and anti-development policies during a panel at the Lignite Energy Council’s annual meeting.
The discussion was moderated by Jessica Bell, a former state senator, now serving as VP of External Affairs for Rainbow Energy Center.
Mandan Rep. Todd Porter, who chairs the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee, traced the state’s energy shift from exporting coal-fired power to Minnesota in the late 1990s to today’s political battles over sources of power generation and transmission access.
“We were all fat, dumb and happy, and we were collecting our taxes... not realizing that this war on coal was even starting and taking shape,” Porter said. “And then all of a sudden that just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and the war got bigger and bigger and bigger.”
Watford City Senator Dale Patten, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, highlighted coal’s 800-year reserve as free storage compared with costly batteries for wind and solar.
“It costs absolutely nothing to store that versus wind and solar,” Patten said. “If you’re going to store any of that, you’re going to have to incur a huge cost.”
Hazen Rep. Anna Novak, who chairs the interim Energy Development and Transmission Committee, described coal’s generational role in her district.
~Western Dakota
Energy Association
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