Project Tundra is a bad investment for North Dakotans and Minnesotans!
Project Tundra is a $1.1 billion project led by Minnkota Power Cooperative to build the world’s largest carbon capture and sequestration facility to be located at the Milton R. Young Station coal-fired power plant in Center, ND. Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) means they aim to capture CO2 produced from burning dirty coal and store it underground forever.
There are not currently any functioning power plants with CCS in the country. Project Tundra aims to capture 95% of CO2 emissions, however, the recently shuttered Petra Nova CCS project a power plant in Texas was only designed to capture 33% of emissions and missed that goal by 17%. The Petra Nova plant was shut down in large part because it was not financially viable in addition to continually failing to meet its CCS goals.
Nine reasons why Minnkota Power needs to Stop Wasting Money on Project Tundra:
- There is NO convincing scientific evidence that it would be successful at the scale needed for it to make a difference. Project Tundra uses about 40% of the energy produced by burning coal solely to capture the carbon. This will double the cost of electricity from this plant.
- Similar carbon capture facilities in other states and Canada have shut down because they were not financially viable.
- The technology involved with Project Tundra is experimental. There is potential for damaging the earth and water supplies.
- Project Tundra will prevent the advancement of renewable energy. Coal takes a long time to ramp up to get on the power grid, therefore it does not offer the flexibility needed to turn off and on when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining or when there is peak demand.
- We are in a transition away from coal, which is accelerated by the pandemic, banks are already saying no to investing in coal.
- Renewable energy is much cheaper than fossil fuels and that’s even before the large pollution costs of coal is added to the calculation. Further investment is making clean energy more efficient, economical, and accessible to everyone.
- North Dakota’s neighbors do not want to buy the state’s excess dirty coal power.
- Project Tundra does nothing to address the other pollutants emitted from coal plants: nitrogen dioxide, mercury, sulfur dioxide, etc.
- Project Tundra is an expensive endeavor that will only harm the rural economy. The average North Dakotan or Minnesotan will not benefit.