Letter to the editor: Electricity regulations could hurt N.D.’s future growth

Talk about it

We North Dakotans stand at a critical time in our history — much like our ancestors did almost a hundred years ago. Back then, we faced the problem of getting our products to market without being charged an exorbitant price for transportation. Rather than remain at the mercy of the big grain companies and railroads, the North Dakotans of old banded together under the political leadership of the Non-Partisan League (NPL) to solve the problem by creating the state mill and elevator in Grand Forks.

Today, North Dakota’s economy is thriving not only due to oil revenue, but also because investors have poured millions of dollars into North Dakota wind farms, bringing many new jobs to our state. As a PEW study on clean energy jobs in North Dakota indicated, clean energy job growth has outpaced job growth in the rest of the economy by a 3 to 1 margin over the past 10 years. We are now seeing it really pick up thanks to wind, and the amount of money coming to North Dakota is massive. Therefore, it’s in the best interest of every North Dakotan that our electricity gets onto the wires.

However, currently we risk losing millions of dollars because M.I.S.O. (Midwest Independent System Operator) is now being used under the pressure of transmission owners to create policies that could completely halt the development of new wind energy in the Midwest. MISO has filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to force new generators (wind) to pay for 100 percent of the cost of all new transmission lines. The original agreement was that generators and transmission owners each paid 50 percent.

Please write or call your government leaders and let them know that MISO’s 100 percent cost allocation to generators is not good for North Dakota, especially community-owned projects.

If you want to read more about what the American Wind Energy Association and Wind On the Wires are doing to help stop this anti-wind MISO legislation, visit this Web site: http://www.awea.org/newsroom/releases/AWEA_WOW_Oppose_Trans__Policy_Change_13August09.html

Jim Kambeitz

Bismarck

Tags: opinion, letters, electricity, power, regulation, growth