Letter to the Editor: Montana's clean power plan is good for economy

Editor:

I haven’t seen the crap piled so high since our ranch had a feedlot back in the ’70s. NorthWestern Energy recently commissioned a report by the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research to sue the EPA over its Clean Power Plan. Almost every page of the report is littered with false assumptions, twisted logic and anti-environmental delusion.

Contrary to everything Gov. Steve Bullock has said he would do, the NorthWestern report assumes that his Clean Power Plan will cause all the Colstrip units to close and make existing transmission worthless. In reality, we have the opportunity for a Montana made solution that could benefit all Montanans.

For instance, Colstrip could become a renewable energy hub, with feeder lines all over eastern Montana supplying wind power to Washington. And probably cheaper than current prices, since the wind farm at Judith Gap is generating electricity at half the cost of Colstrip.

It turns out that in Washington the wind blows most at night and in the summer, while in Montana the wind blows most during the day and in winter. Montana can supply clean power to Washington as reliably as Colstrip ever did. 

As more honest studies than NorthWestern’s have found, for every dollar invested, renewable energy creates twice as many jobs as coal. After the transition to renewable energy, Montana would gain jobs, not lose them.

Despite what NorthWestern would have you believe, there is every reason to expect that the Clean Power Plan will grow Montana’s economy.

Wade Sikorski

Baker