By Dave Thompson
Bismarck, ND – South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds is making a pitch for a new coal-fired power plant, being planned by Bismarck based Basin Electric Power Cooperative and a coalition of five other electric utilities.
The coalition is studying sites for a billion dollar coal-fired power plant either in North Dakota, South Dakota or Iowa.
Rounds says the Upper Midwest will become the nation's leader in energy production.
"I think the two hurricanes down in the Gulf Coast show how sensitive the Gulf Coast is to weather conditions, and the limitations that it places on future development of oil production," said Rounds. "It means that we have coal in the Upper Midwest, and we should be doing everything we can to environmentally safely use coal and produce energy with it."
Rounds says South Dakota will be aggressive in competing for the Basin plant, as it did when it won the project that has doubled the capacity of the Big Stone Power Plant near Milbank.
"We want to become a net exporter of power by the year 2010," Rounds said. "We're on our way to do that right now. We will have real close to 700-million gallons of ethanol being produced by the year 2007. WE had over 455 million gallons produced this year in South Dakota. So we have a very aggressive time line to be an energy exporter within our state. And we think having additional power plants within our state does nothing except help."
Rounds says a new plant will also mean new transmission lines -- and that will be good for developing wind energy as well.
Basin says no decisions have yet been made on the site for the new plant.