We needed to phase out coal decades ago, but we delayed. Then we needed to do that faster, and we hemmed and hawed. Or more correctly, were thwarted by dark money fueled Republicans. Now, we are in desperate need of phasing out coal and other fossil fuel sources for making electricity– even while we slowly slog through the process of electrifying everything– in order to save the planet from the ravages of climate change.

Great River Energy Goes Back On A Promise

Recently, we were slapped in the face by the directors of Great River Energy. They want us to wait longer. They want to keep burning coal.

In 2020, Great River Energy had put forward a plan, which was widely praised, to close the large Coal Creek Station power plant in North Dakota, which would significantly reduce the percentage of carbon-belching sources used to generate electricity by the energy co-op based in Maple Grove. Their office building ironically displays a windmill, an energy storage water pond, and some solar panels.

On June 30th, Great River Energy broke their promise. They announced that they would sell the Coal Creek Station to Rainbow Energy of North Dakota and buy back the energy that plant produces.

This turns out to be a bum deal for the planet, and for customers as well. In fact, it is such a bad deal that we have not been able to figure out why GRE is really doing it. It makes no sense. We have cast a wide net of inquiry to learn the reasons for this deal, and we mainly found excuses given to stakeholders from insiders who could only speak anonymously. Those excuses do not hold up.

Before describing any of this, be aware: This is not a done deal. It is possible that citizens, rate payers, and people who give a hoot about our planet can cause this deal to not happen. It all depends on the votes of a handful of directors. Keep reading for what you can do, and who to contact.

About 250 people would lose their jobs if the plant closed down. Pro-pollution coal power supporters tell us it is 900, but it is not. There are people in the coal mining industry who will of course lose their jobs when we stop using coal entirely. We should pay close attention to that problem and address it, but it is not a reason to fail to shutter coal plants.

Ironically, the area county commissioners have seen fit to put barriers up to stop the development of wind power in the Coal Creek region, so we can’t have clean energy from that wind-rich area. But, we are told that the county will remove the restrictions on wind if coal plant sale goes through. Owners of the Minnesota based co-ops may want to know why they are being kept from getting the benefits of wind power now, but will be able to pay for it later when their co-ops no longer have a direct stake in the matter. In another instance, in Madison County Iowa, county officials are standing in the way of wind power, but MidAmerican energy company is standing up to those clean energy naysayers and taking them to court. Great River Energy could take a page out of that playbook.

Continued Use of Coal Creek is Not Necessary or Logical

GRE is part of MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. Remember all the problems Texas had last winter because they built an inadequate energy production and transmission system? Texas is not part of MISO, but Minnesota is, and this is why we were sad for Texas but not worried about our own energy. MISO has been called the world’s largest machine. It is a system of electric producers and transmitters that runs from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, and includes all or part of 16 states or provinces. GRE buys and sells electricity on the MISO market. It is widely understood that if the Coal Creek station plant broke this instant and could not come back on line, in short order it would be replaced by existing surplus, mostly clean energy such as wind, together with a modest MISO-wide increase in use of peaker plants, which usually use methane, but in the near future will increasingly be battery-solar stations.

The travesty of keeping this plant open truly is an ironic slap in the face. North Dakota and the counties near the Coal Creek station have some of the best wind resources on the planet, but building windmills in North Dakota is opposed, repressed, or even not allowed by local authorities who won’t respond to the climate emergency, and who want to prop up a dirty industry that is causing the sea levels to rise, the air to become to hot to live in, and the frequency of killer storms to multiply dramatically. There is a high tech ultra efficient transmission line that runs from North Dakota to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, originally built (thanks to Paul Wellstone) to transmit wind-generated electricity from where it is cheap and easy to make to where it is most needed. This line is owned by the rate payers of the coops, who have been paying for it over the last 40 years. It is a Direct Current line so there is very little loss over great distances of transmission. Ideally extensive wind power extraction on the high plains would provide a very large percentage of the electricity needed in the high demand areas of the upper midwest. That plan has apparently been abandoned by Great River Energy, and there will be a huge cost doing so. A cost measured in lives lost, Illness, and economic catastrophe.

Electric Utilities Need To Stand Up To Anti-Wind Political Forces

Aside from the immediate problem of this coal plant being open indefinitely instead of closing on schedule, the fact that wind power can’t be developed in North Dakota means that future development in places where the environment matters to local officials will require building new and expensive transmission systems elsewhere. So, this whole move will cause ratepayers in Minnesota and elsewhere to pay more for clean energy than they might otherwise. It is a good thing that clean energy is so inexpensive compared to dirty and planet-killing coal, but it is yet another slap in the face. One solution to this is to close the plant and offer North Dakota a deal: Get on board and make wind power, we’ll buy it. Until then, you’all keep being you, we’ll find our clean energy elsewhere.

Coal plants tend to be expensive to run, and this one has cost about $170 million a year more than if we were using renewables. But it also costs money to stop using a coal plant, and this sale might relieve GRE of the responsibility one has when one eventually closes a plant. Shirking responsibility would be a craven excuse for making a decision that will also increase the effects of climate change. In any event, it is not clear why GRE chose to go back on their promise to close the plant. We can only guess until board members of the energy cooperatives give us the straight story.

The economics of *not* closing this plant right now are highly questionable given that federal help to close coal plants is literally in the pipeline, as part of infrastructure legislation being considered in Washington DC. Stakeholders we’ve spoken to tell us that there is no Federal money in the pipeline, but our sources in Washington tell us otherwise. This sale will address part but not all of GREs half billion dollar debt. Even if the currently debated legislation does not produce funds to allay the cost of closing Coal Creek, closing coal plants is a national-level necessity. A scheme to keep a plant like this open is very poorly timed, and this poor timing again raises the question of what is really going on here.

It is worth nothing that over the last decade or so, about half of the roughly 500 coal plants in the US have closed. Every year that goes by, the relative significance of one plant increases. Closing this plant over the next couple of years will have twice the relative impact it would have had in 2000, and fighting to close it has twice the impetus. Pro tip for GRE: This is not your grandmother’s environmental movement.

Technologies That Do Not Exist And Can Not Work Are Not The Solution

And no, carbon capture technology is not a solution. The continued use of coal to make our electricity is often argued to be feasible since carbon capture technology can somehow eat the pollution from those plants. This is simply not true. It takes energy to make carbon solid or liquid and you get the energy back when you turn it into CO2, and visa-versa. Carbon capture technology requires using more energy than you are making, or requires usurping some other existing CO2 to a solid system already in place. There is some room for carbon capture technology in highly specialized circumstances. Astronauts use it in space at a very small scale, for example. At the scale power plants and major transmission systems operate, it can be called a fantasy if we want to be nice. Really, it is just a lie.

Why The Lack of Transparency?

Why has this complex discussion not been discussed, and information transmitted, from the cooperatives to ratepayers? We asked around. Nobody can say. Nondisclosure agreements, don’t you know. We have heard that the final vote on this plan, likely to happen in the next few weeks, will be taken in private.

Why is such a contorted and ill advised plan, with Rainbow Energy the only obvious winner, being carried out? Is there some reason not being mentioned to prop up Rainbow Energy? Nobody can explain that to us, perhaps because of nondisclosure agreements.

These shenanigans count on people not paying attention. The days when people fail to pay attention to closing versus not closing coal plants are long, long gone.

You Can Help Close Coal Creek Power Plant!

There are things you can do to help stop the sale of the Coal Creek Power Plant and the high voltage direct current power line connected to it, but you must act quickly!

First and foremost, if you are a member of any of the 28 cooperatives with over 700,000 members that work with Great River, listed here, that means that YOU have a representative on a board of directors involved in this decision. Write them, call them, email them. If your energy cooperative is Connexus, contact them to say “thanks” for saying no to this deal, because they already did that.

If your energy cooperative is Dakota Electric, contact them right away and ask for a NO vote on the coal plant sale. Dakota Electric is meeting on July 29th at 8:30 am via Zoom to decide this. As one of the second largest member coops within GRE, a no vote by this board would go a long way to stopping this deal. .Sign up to attend the virtual (online) meeting by emailing Melissa Cherney at mcherney@dakotaelectric.com  We’ve learned that the public will be able to speak at the beginning of the board meeting and the vote itself will happen later and won’t be open to the public. 

Contact Great River Energy and express your displeasure on them going back on their promise. Perhaps note that future promises they make can’t be taken seriously if they continue with this deal.

Write a Letter to the Editor to your local paper if that paper serves an area where GRE provides electricity. There is a very good chance that this applies to your local paper. Here is an example. 

Key points  

In your contact with any of these electric co-ops or in a Letter to the Editor you may write, here are key talking points to consider:

• Great River Energy prides itself on its carbon reduction efforts, and promised to close this coal plant, but is breaking that promise.
• Selling a coal plant and buying back the electricity is an unacceptable shell game.
• The idea that we need this coal generated electricity is wrong. The large, diversified MISO grid can compensate for the plant’s closure.
• It is a shame that the highly efficient DC power line which can be used to transmit wind energy is being held hostage by anti-wind energy interests in North Dakota. That is wrong.
• Promises of carbon capture magically working for Coal Creek are empty promises. 
• Beyond the obvious negative climate impacts, mining and burning coal increases health and safety hazards that cost lives, creates illness, pollutes the environment, and negatively impacts the local economy.due to environmental damage, increased medical costs and lost work hours. 
• There should be much more transparency with members. In May 2020 with the announced closure of the power plant, GRE said members would see a net positive impact (13% reduction) on electricity costs. They are losing $170 million a year with the plant in operation. So why do they now seek to instead sell it, therefore prolonging the life of a huge emitter of carbon dioxide and toxins?

Some questions to ask directors from GRE or member co-ops.

• Why haven’t members been informed of Dakota Electric’s upcoming July 29 vote on the sale? There is absolutely nothing about this in your publication or on your website. There should be time for members of a member owned cooperative to comment on this before any decision is made.
• Why do directors cite NDA (nondisclosure) agreements as the reason they can’t explain why this is a good deal for members, when a year ago GRE said the plant closure would save members money? And why are some directors refusing to engage with members at all, citing the NDA?
• Why is GRE and Dakota Electric taking action that will artificially extend the life of a huge polluter? 
• Why is GRE claiming this helps stabilize the grid when MISO has excess capacity?
• Why are you willing to gamble on unproven technology with CCS? Has a risk/benefit analysis been done and shared? 
• Why is GRE caving to ND political efforts to send a life line to a dying industry that must end now, not 10 years from now, if we are to have any chance of a livable climate?

Join the DFLEC. The DFL Environmental Caucus will be sending out notices to members over the next several days in the event that we have additional actions for you to take. So, if you are not a member, please join up!

Join in the Sierra Club’s Effort

The Sierra Club is also on this, and they have a petition. Please sign it!

Watch for and amplify social media posts on with header “Close Coal Creek” 

Contact Veda Kanitz or Greg Laden if you have questions. Thank you in advance for your help. The final vote by GRE is expected July 30th so we must act quickly!