News Releases for October 2007
October 31, 2007
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Hoeven, Energy Leaders Look To Build On Significant Growth Of State's Energy Industry
FARGO, N.D. – Gov. John Hoeven and members of the Empower North Dakota Commission met in Fargo today as part of a series of meetings to develop recommendations for expanding the state's energy industry.
"North Dakota's existing state energy policy, Empower North Dakota, is aggressively moving both renewable and traditional energy development forward," Hoeven said, "but we must remain committed to doing even more. The Empower North Dakota Commission will work to develop policy recommendations to expand the state's energy industry throughout the 21st century and help our state realize the full potential of its diverse energy resources."
According to Hoeven, North Dakota's energy resources are more diverse than any other state in the nation, making it a leader in coal, oil, biofuels, wind and hydrogen. "In the last six years, our efforts to develop these resources have helped fuel economic growth throughout the state," Hoeven said. "The commission's goal is to take energy development to the next level in North Dakota."
Hoeven appointed the 14-member commission, which includes representatives from all sectors of the energy industry. The group held its first meeting in September in Bismarck where Hoeven outlined his administration's multi-resource energy policy that includes aggressive policy goals and incentives in each energy sector.
The goals of the existing Empower North Dakota energy policy include:
- To have 75 percent of all gasoline sold in state include a blend of ethanol by 2015.
- To build new biodiesel plants in North Dakota to produce 135 million gallons by 2015.
- To have 10 percent of electricity produced in North Dakota from renewable sources by 2015.
- To build one and possibly more clean coal electric generation plants in the state by 2012.
- To build new lignite gasification/liquefaction facilities in the next decade.
- To exceed the state's historical peak oil production last achieved in 1984.
- To commercialize the deployment of hydrogen power as a fuel source in North Dakota.
A number of innovative energy projects are underway in North Dakota resulting in growth across all energy sectors, including gasification, coal liquefaction, coal-drying, combined-use energy parks and state-of-the-art horizontal oil drilling methods.
- The oil industry is producing more than 125,000 barrels a day, near record production.
- Four major projects are enrolled in the state's Lignite 21 program. These include potential power plants in South Heart and Gascoyne, a coal liquefaction facility in McLean County and a combined-use energy plant in Spiritwood.
- Great River Energy is implementing a coal-drying system at its Coal Creek Station power plant that could change the industry.
- Basin Electric is leading a major CO2 capture and sequestration project in North Dakota.
- Four years ago, North Dakota had only two small ethanol facilities and no biodiesel facilities. Today, existing and planned facilities have the potential to produce a half billion gallons of ethanol and 85 million gallons of biodiesel.
- Four years ago, North Dakota produced less than 1 MW of wind power. Today, current and projected projects will produce up to 900 MW of wind power.
Today's meeting included tours of the Fargo Landfill Methane Collection System and the NDSU Pilot Plant. The Pilot Plant's research laboratories serve to gain a better understanding of the processing of North Dakota commodities for food, biofuel and bioproducts. Current projects include biodiesel from canola and other oilseeds, canola oil-based resin for composite materials, utilization of meal protein from canola and other oilseeds, cofermentation of field peas with corn for ethanol, pretreatment of cellulose/biomass for ethanol, and use of ozone to reduce microbial contaminants in durum and barley. Other projects in recent years have looked into new uses for sunflowers, flaxseed, mustard, hard red spring wheat, crambe, amaranth and other crops.
Future commission meetings will be held November 20 in Grand Forks, January 25 in Dickinson, February 27 in Minot, March 26 in Williston, April 2-3 in Bismarck, May 28 in Jamestown, and June 25 in Bismarck.
Commission members include:
Ron Day of Tesoro, representing the refining or gas-processing industry
Terry Goerger, a farmer near Mantador, representing the agriculture industry
Shane Goettle, Commissioner of Commerce
Paul Goulding of Goulding's Oil, representing petroleum marketers
Eric Mack of Archer Daniels Midland, representing the biodiesel industry
Ron Ness of the North Dakota Petroleum Council
Curtis Jabs of Basin Electric Power Cooperative, representing generation and transmission electric
cooperatives
Mark Nisbet of Xcel Energy, representing the wind industry
Randy Schneider, chairman of the North Dakota Ethanol Producers Association
Andrea Stomberg of MDU, representing investor-owned utilities
David Straley of North American Coal Company, representing the lignite coal industry
Sandi Tabor of the Lignite Energy Council
John Weeda of Great River Energy, representing the biomass industry
Chuck McFarland of Otter Tail Power Company, Ex-Officio
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