A stone marker in Rugby, N.D. identifies the town as the "Geographic Center of the North American Continent." No marker identifies the state as one of America's top two or three in wind-power potential. Yet North Dakota's vast expanses and steady winds endow it with the capacity to generate more than half as much electricity as all 50 states currently produce from all sources combined, according to a recent Harvard study of U.S. wind energy potential.

Indeed, that potential, equivalent to 2.6 trillion kilowatt-hours annually, is almost 100 times greater than the current output of the state's coal- and lignite-fired generators. And while tapping a goodly share of that capability would require a great many giant turbines -- as many as one per several square miles across the state -- each tower would only occupy a small footprint, leaving the land largely intact for agriculture and other complementary uses. Jobs erecting the towers and servicing the turbines would be another plus.

So how come wind power accounts for just 2 percent (XLS) of North Dakota's electricity generation -- barely matching wind's national share? One obvious reason is lack of transmission capability to reach load centers. But another is the extraordinary cheapness of coal.

In 2007 (the last year for which we have data), the coal and lignite burned in North Dakota power plants cost just under a dollar per million Btu, on average. Picture 12 cent a gallon gasoline, and you get a sense of just how inexpensive that coal is, in equivalent-energy terms.

That's why coal accounts for 93 percent of the state's power production, and why North Dakota is able to export almost two kilowatt-hours of electricity for every one it consumes -- mining, delivering, and burning the stuff is dirt cheap.

Transitioning from coal to wind-powered electricity is probably the biggest single step we can take to dial back our CO2 emissions, and North Dakota and other High Plains states are well-positioned to lead the charge. The best way forward is not to further subsidize wind farms -- Washington already does this through the 2.1 cent/kWh production tax credit -- but to level the playing field with coal by adding an emissions charge to fossil fuel prices.

You have to marvel, then, at the passivity of the state's senators in the ongoing debate over climate legislation. As Bill Chameides of Duke's Nicholas Center on the Environment reported recently, Sen. Kent Conrad has been far more focused on preserving jobs in the state's oil, gas, and agricultural sectors than in helping wind energy compete with dirty coal. His fellow Democrat, Sen. Bryan Dorgan, has inveighed against the cap-and-trade architecture in the Kerry-Boxer bill, warning that "the Wall Street crowd can't wait to sink their teeth into a new trillion-dollar trading market in which hedge funds and investment banks would trade and speculate on carbon credits and securities." Yet Dorgan has offered no alternative means of putting a price on carbon emissions, without which development of wind farms and other clean energy will remain at a snail's pace.

There is a path to a carbon price without Wall Street speculation, of course, and that's a carbon tax that's raised steadily and predictably over time. Distributing the revenues raised by the carbon tax to households on an equal, per capita basis, as Alaska has done for decades with its North Slope oil revenues, would protect families against the rise in energy prices and also ensure that "big government" gets no bigger -- both major concerns in the Plains States as elsewhere.

A revenue-neutral carbon tax, or carbon fee-and-dividend as some prefer to call it, would seem to be just the ticket for Senators from wind-rich states who rightly fear climate change and market speculation. North and South Dakota both celebrated their 120th anniversary last week as members of the union. What better way to harken back to that independent pioneer spirit than to spit in the face of the special interests and help a revenue-neutral carbon tax win a place in the national climate policy debate?

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Byron Dorgan

Sen. Byron Dorgan says he wants to address climate change: "I think there is enough science out there to suggest something is going on." But he opposes the cap-and-trade approach. "I’m in favor of taking action to reduce CO2 emissions and to protect our environment. But I don’t support the 'cap-and-trade' plan now being debated in the Congress," he wrote in a recent editorial in The Bismarck Tribune.

He is critical of using a "market-based" approach to reducing carbon, and says he wants more "reasonable timelines" for reductions. He also argues that a majority of the revenue raised from a carbon cap should go to offset energy price increases for consumers.

Dorgan is particularly concerned about manipulation of a carbon market. "I’m not very interested with having a bunch of folks with a bunch of money get their mitts on trading credits, and have our future and our destiny tied to their interests," he said in April. "I feel very strongly there’s something going on with our climate. We need to be attentive to it, we need to deal with it, but as we do, we have to be smart."

He acknowledges that climate legislation is needed, but at a May event in North Dakota, he said it "may not be this year. May not even have the votes next year."

Dorgan will want a climate bill to offer support for the coal and agriculture sectors. During debate on last year's Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (which he voted to kill), Dorgan offered an amendment to increase funding for carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) technology.

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This year, during debate on the energy bill that the Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed in June, he again pressed for CCS funding. "We need a future in which we continue to use our most abundant resource, and that's coal," said Dorgan. He also called for more funding for loan guarantees for nuclear power and better plans for storage of nuclear waste. "I think nuclear power will play some role in the development of future energy capabilities," he said.

At the same time, Dorgan is a cheerleader for wind energy, seeing as there's plenty of it blowing across his state. He wanted a stronger renewable electricity standard in the energy bill, and plans to push for it on the Senate floor.

See also: Joseph Romm explains why he thinks Dorgan could be convinced to support climate legislation.

Do you know more about this senator's stance on climate legislation? Tell us.

Find out about other senators by clicking on their names in the right column.

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Kent Conrad

Sen. Kent Conrad's colleague in the House, Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), voted against the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, and Conrad says he wouldn't vote for the bill either. He also joined with three other moderate Democrats in suggesting that the climate vote should be put off until next year.

Last year, Conrad did not vote on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, and said he would not have ultimately voted for passage.

He believes the bill the House passed this year is better than Lieberman-Warner, but still not good enough. "They've certainly improved it substantially from where it was last year by what they did in the House, but it still has a ways to go before I can vote for it," Conrad said recently.

He's concerned about protecting home-state industries like agriculture, coal, and oil, and is expected to call for some expanded fossil-fuel production in a Senate bill.

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Conrad was a leader of the bipartisan "Gang of 10" (which later grew to a Gang of 16) that last summer pushed for an energy package that includes both investments in renewables and increased oil and gas drilling.

Do you know more about this senator's stance on climate legislation? Tell us.

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Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking

Forget hungry, hungry hippos -- here come the hungry, hungry elk. Three national parks in Colorado and the Dakotas are awash in antlered gluttons, at some places more than twice what's considered a preferable population. "Willow and aspen stands are declining [and] that deprives other species of habitat they need," says a spokesperson for Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park. "We have to manage for the others ... beaver, butterfly, a variety of birds, insects. It's a whole ecosystem concept, and it can get out of whack." Nature extremes in the form of drought or severe snowfall can sometimes help reduce elk populations, as can shipping the animals elsewhere, injecting them with contraceptives, or introducing predators. Nonetheless, park managers plan to move forward with more-reliable, always-controversial "lethal reduction."

source:

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DOD declares wind turbines can interfere with radar, but says some can proceed

The Defense Department has finally completed a long-awaited study on how wind farms impact military radar, which clears the way for some stalled wind projects to continue. At least a dozen projects in Illinois, North Dakota, and Wisconsin had been put on hold pending the DOD study. In its report, submitted this week to the Senate and House Armed Services committees, the DOD declared that turbines in radar line of sight can interfere with detecting and tracking aerial objects, but the Pentagon also showed willingness to allow wind projects to proceed anyway if they pass a case-by-case review process. Wind turbines "present technical challenges to the effectiveness of radar systems that must be carefully evaluated on a case-by-case basis to ensure acceptable military readiness is maintained," the DOD wrote in its report. Wind advocates are hopeful that any conflicts can be resolved. "Decades of experience tell us that wind and radar can coexist," said Randall Swisher of the American Wind Energy Association.

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Army Corps can continue its Missouri River meddling, Supreme Court says

In bad news for enviros (why are we always saying that?), the Supreme Court has declined to hear challenges in three cases questioning the Army Corps of Engineers' authority on the Missouri River. With authority now decidedly in hand, the Corps can continue to prioritize the downstream shipping industry over upstream recreation and environmental concerns. North and South Dakota and green groups had urged the Corps to store more water in upstream reservoirs, benefiting the fishing industry and endangered aquatic life. "The Corps has favored the larger, downstream states for far too long," said Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath. However, in a teensy bit of good news, the Supremes' decision also means that the Corps can go ahead with a planned early May "spring rise," a release of water to encourage spawning by the endangered pallid sturgeon. Enviros support the release, while upstream states worry about a water shortage and downstream states worry about flooding.

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From Badlands to worse.

Photo: NPS.

To Theodore Roosevelt, a man who battled chronic asthma, the remote Badlands of North Dakota were as beloved for their fresh air as for their dramatic views and big game. "Wildflowers and sagebrush spiced the clean, dry North Dakotan breeze. Roosevelt's asthmatic lungs rejoiced in this air, as did his soul in the sheer size and emptiness of the landscape," Edmund Morris wrote in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Now ol' T.R. is probably spinning -- or wheezing -- in his grave.

Just before Valentine's Day this year, the Bush administration gave the North Dakota electric industry a sweetheart deal, agreeing to a plan that will pave the way for new coal-fired power plants to be built in the state near Theodore Roosevelt National Park -- the same picturesque terrain where its namesake discovered his calling as the godfather of the American conservation movement.

Since 1999, the U.S. EPA and North Dakota officials have sparred over air quality in the park, with the EPA saying that pollution has exceeded federal clean-air standards and state and industry representatives trying to refute the charge. According to state air-evaluation reports from 1999, the region's power plants were pumping out about 66,000 tons more sulfur dioxide each year than permitted under federal rules. In 2000, EPA officials in Region 8, which includes North Dakota, confirmed this finding.

Teddy, back in cleaner days.

Photo: NPS.

But suddenly, as of Friday, North Dakota's power-plant emissions have been deemed acceptable by the Bush EPA -- despite the fact that no significant efforts have been made to reduce pollution in the state.

What gives? Well, what always gives when industry demands run up against pollution standards these days? The standards. The EPA agreed to let North Dakota change the methods it uses to estimate air pollution, altering the criteria within its pollution modeling software that dictate what baseline years are used and how the pollution data is averaged.

State and industry officials argue that the revised models should produce results that are more consistent with those of large air-monitoring equipment installed within the park -- equipment which consistently registers lower pollution levels.

But according to an EPA Region 8 official who asked to remain anonymous, the results from that equipment are not necessarily to be trusted: "There are only two air monitors within a sprawling 70,000 acres of territory, and the data they produce is hardly reliable." The official contends that the analysis models the state has been using, which employ data gathered at more than 100 points in the park from smaller, mobile equipment, are more accurate.

Gov. John Hoeven

Photo: N.D. Governor's Office.

Still, despite objections from Region 8 officials, EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., last week announced a deal with North Dakota's Republican governor, John Hoeven. At a press conference last Friday, Hoeven announced the agreement with an assurance that the new modeling system will enable the state to build additional power plants. "It sets the stage for new investments in our energy industry and real progress in our rural communities," Hoeven beamed.

David Glatt, head of environmental health at North Dakota's Health Department, asserted that the new model will assess emissions more accurately than the old one, but local environmentalists say they don't trust Glatt and his colleagues.

"These [state officials] have proven themselves to be a devious bunch -- they have cooked the books in the past to get around clean-air requirements," said Mary Mitchell of the Dakota Resource Council, a local group which has sued the EPA for not upholding its responsibility to limit pollution in North Dakota. "We have evidence that after the original pollution reports were made in 1999, the industry and the state made 14 separate efforts to redo the reports with different 'modeling scenarios' to make it look like they were complying. And now they're getting permission to officially change the methodology."

Reed Zars, the lawyer representing the Dakota Resource Council, said the glad-handing between the Bush EPA and North Dakota smacks of "a political fix: We know to a certainty that this deal was imposed on the professionals and scientists from above in Washington at the EPA. Regional staff at EPA have consistently taken a view that is 180 degrees different than what's expressed by the powers that be."

Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust, said his real concern is not merely how this will affect North Dakota, but the implications for parks nationwide. "The Clean Air Act specifically states that pristine areas of the United States ... should be kept pristine," he said. "But now that one [national] park is getting away with a weaker monitoring system, it's only a matter of time before the other states catch on."

Sure enough, Kerrigan Clough, the EPA's deputy regional administrator in Region 8, has told the press that five other states in the region -- Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming -- want to follow North Dakota's lead. "They're lining up," said an official who works under Clough and asked to remain anonymous. "We fully expect these states will also want new methods for calculating pollution [in their parks]."

Soon it won't just be Roosevelt, but Edward Abbey, David Brower, and countless other wildland crusaders spinning and coughing in their graves.

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In a move that could lead to more pollution in national parks, the Bush administration on Friday said it will permit North Dakota to change the way it estimates air pollution in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Seems like a small thing, but the new estimation formula is likely to produce lower emissions predictions, paving the way for a new coal-fired power plant to be built near the park. Enviros fear that the U.S. EPA will cut similar deals with other states -- for example, Utah, where there's a proposal to build a new coal-fired plant in the vicinity of Capital Reef National Park*. "This looks to be a terrible precedent for national parks across the country," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of Clean Air Trust. But supporters of the change argue that the new system will produce more accurate air-pollution predictions.

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Even though it lacks big cities and doesn't have the smokestacks of say, an Ohio or a Texas, North Dakota is the only state in the country where the air in federal preserves is more polluted than the Clean Air Act allows. So says the U.S. EPA, which will decide soon whether to force North Dakota to undertake a cleanup that could cost industrial facilities hundreds of millions of dollars. According to the act, sulfur dioxide pollution can only increase a minuscule amount in a given federal preserve beyond that preserve's 1970s levels. The EPA says levels have exceeded the allowable amount in western North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge. Many federal preserves outside of North Dakota have higher pollution levels overall, but other states have kept the levels from rising since the 1970s. North Dakota, for its part, says the EPA has got its math wrong.

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Unless you live there, you probably haven't been following the brouhaha in North Dakota. So here's the skinny: The U.S. EPA insists that the state is in violation of air quality standards because of the high concentration of sulfur dioxide in the air at the otherwise-pristine Theodore Roosevelt National Park and a national wildlife refuge. The state, meanwhile, conducted its own computer air quality models and says it is not in violation of the standards. The EPA was unconvinced, and used the same model but different data to prove its point. If the EPA maintains its position, some North Dakota power producers could be required to clean up their act, scrubbing sulfur from unscrubbed power plants. Moreover, the EPA has threatened to take over the state's pollution program.

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